


The Trouble We're In

by nyxocity



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Costume Parties & Masquerades, First Love, Heartbreak, Multi, Pining, Post-Episode: s05e22 Not Fade Away, Post-Episode: s07e22 Chosen, Round and Round We Go, everyone sleeps with pretty much everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-17
Updated: 2007-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:00:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26576413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyxocity/pseuds/nyxocity
Summary: Post-Chosen/NFA. Buffy & Spike are on a mission together in Cancun. Undercover at a masquerade ball, Buffy encounters an alluring woman who reunites her with someone she never thought she'd see again--and their relationship is more complicated than ever.
Relationships: Angel/Buffy Summers, Angel/Nina Ash, Angel/Spike (BtVS), Nina Ash/Buffy Summers, Nina Ash/Spike, Spike/Buffy Summers
Kudos: 4
Collections: Sublime Archive





	1. Chapter 1

_It's enough  
That's the game  
It's the reason that we lost when we played  
It's the sleep  
That I lose  
It's a lifetime spent avoiding the news  
But did I tell you that?  
Nothing matters but the momentary touch of your hand  
Nothing matters but the times you do as much as you can  
Nothing matters but the softness of your skin  
And you're really not aware of the trouble that we're in  
  
~The Trouble We’re In, Mesh_  
  
  
Seeking Slayers has taken her around the world, to places she'd never dreamed she'd see, and in a lifetime of dark surprises and stone-faced death, it's amazing to realize there are still things that can take her breath away, leave her giddy and wide-eyed in wonder.  
  
The ceiling curves high above her head, intricately carved cathedral arches rising up between gargoyles that snarl and grimace from their perch atop massive pillars. They gaze down from the spaces between stained glass skylights that swell in graceful domes toward the sky, and she can imagine how beautiful the room must be when the sun shone through them, painting the whole room with scattered prisms of rainbow light. Chandeliers drip from the center of the room, huge crystals set into place like the petals of a flower inverted, flashing with warm yellow light as couples twirl and spin beneath them on the ballroom floor. Costumes sparkle and shimmer in dizzying waves, men and women in elegant textures of silk and velvet, bedecked in glittering jewels and crowned with elegant plumage. Men in tuxedoes edge carefully around the crowd, their faces obscured by plain black masks, carrying trays of glasses filled with sparkling amber and an array of hors de oeuvre’s she can’t even pronounce, much less afford.  
  
Petticoats swirl about her legs, whispering like quiet ghosts, and she imagines herself a princess in a fairy tale, graceful swaying of frothing lace. Hair pulled up in curls that spill from the crown of her head in shower of burnished gold, wispy blue ribbon barely restraining them. She stares out at the panoramic scene before her through the eyes of her feathered mask and breathes deep, feeling her chest swell against the confines of her dress.  
  
Vampires flit among the throngs of people like circling sharks, bodies slippery and smooth, gliding shadows and meaningful smiles. She watches them twist like flames dancing in the darkness, powerful and possessed of preternatural grace.  
  
And one among them that moves with restless fluidity, golden and proud as a lion.  
  
Spike meets her eyes from across the room, and she turns away from vibrant blue that burns, searing deep, begging her to lay bare the secrets of her heart. Always open, always aching, love imagined and half-remembered in the shadowed lines of his face.  
  
His presence always kept near enough to remember what love feels like, far enough to keep herself safe from it.  
  
She moves her feet toward the bar and away from truths she cannot face, skirts rustling and frothing around her legs.  
  
She scarcely notices the man who looks at her sideways as she approaches, eyes deep brown and twinkling, as if attempting charm.  
  
“Hey, Little Miss Muffet. Wanna sit on my tuffet?” he asks, as if it might be the cleverest line any man had ever uttered to a woman. Dressed in full Vampire Lestat regalia, he is middle-aged and paunchy, a ridiculous package of yellowed lace tied up in ribbons of gold. Above the bat shaped mask that houses his beady eyes, his brows wriggle like two newborn caterpillars.  
  
Buffy breathes deep, praying for patience, and brandishes the prop she’s carried in her hands all night.  
  
“Kinky,” he breathes, moving even closer, and now she can smell him; sour musk, sweat, and something darker, meaty. “You wanna use that on me?” he mock-whispers, loud enough for the entire bar to hear.  
  
Her jaw clicks, grinds into place and locks as she turns, prop held in both hands now as she spreads her legs beneath her skirt in a fighting stance. "As a matter of fact—"  
  
"She's not Little Miss Muffet, moron." The crowd behind them parts likes the seas, revealing a rush of a woman in a slinky green dress that surges between them. She wedges herself against the bar as if trying to become part of it, a cigarette held haphazardly in one hand, an empty champagne glass in the other. Metallic snakes weave in and out of her blond hair; supine, iridescent coils that shiver with her every move like tiny nerve endings, their emerald and violet hues in perfect complement to her metallic green sheath dress. Tiny emerald rhinestones ring mischievous blue eyes, in turn ringed by two snakes that dip down gracefully over her face, twining together in an infinity shape that forms her mask. She bestows Buffy with a brilliant smile, then she tips her head toward the door and gives Lestat de Paunchybutt a cool, insouciant grin.  
  
"Louis's outside eating poodles again. You better go stop him."  
  
This conferred in a congenial, confidential tone, and then a toss of golden hair and writhing snakes collides with his face as she turns deliberately back to Buffy. She smiles like a diamond, and her blue eyes sparkle with amusement that outshines even her beauty.  
  
"And... three, two, one..."  
  
Bewildered and blinking, Monsieur Lestat takes a shaky step backward and is swallowed by the crowd like a hungry shark, gulped down in a whirlwind of colors.  
  
"Men," the woman says, blue eyes rolling heavenward with a mystified shake of her coils. "The way you were wielding that weapon, I figured I'd better help him get a clue. I'm Regina, by the way," she adds, holding out a hand.  
  
Buffy takes it in her own, feeling warm, soft flesh press gently against delicate bone. But there is strength in that grip, bone-deep and soul-stubborn.  
  
“I'm Joan.” She winces inside, feeling her mind flinch away from the lie. Giles had told her like, a gazillion times not to use her own name.  
  
 _When Hellhouse Monthly is calling you to do a photo shoot..._  
  
She lets Giles's voice fade away and focuses on Regina instead.  
  
“Nice to meet you.” Her voice is low, sultry, like a late summer afternoon, and she’s everything Buffy has ever wanted to be; gorgeous, sexy, perfect, confident, comfortable, witty and charming.  
  
“That's my boyfriend over there.” Regina takes a breath, her breasts (God, even her breasts are perfect) heaving and threatening to bubble over. “Rico!” She turns and waves a manicured hand, and at the end of the bar a man in a red and black matador suit waves back, his cuff twinkling with a blinding flash of red rhinestones. In a twist of mangled and badly misplaced irony, his face is almost entirely obscured by a snarling bull's mask--also in red, and sprinkled liberally with glitter. Two long horns poke out from the side of the mask, one of them bent nearly in half, the point dangling flaccidly.  
  
Blue eyes ringed in glittering green look at her knowingly, leaning close and conferring, “He thought it would be clever.” She chuckles and Buffy feels laughter well up in her own chest. “Like I said; men.”  
  
Tall, broad-shouldered and dark-haired, most of his handsomeness obscured by his ridiculous costume... and yet, there’s a flicker of a feeling. The quick, bright flame of a candle before winking out.  
  
 _Something in the way he moves..._  
  
Loose-limbed and goofy on the surface, but beneath that... something darker. Almost predatory. Slayer sense tickles at the back of her mind, flickering tendrils of smoke that coalesce into a single, sudden thought.  
  
 _Vampire._  
  
The Slayer inside her sings, low and black steady hum--but it's all wrong, all tangled up and twisted with shards of memory and fire that dances like liquid on the air. A half-remembered dream, a fleeting sense of recognition, familiar for an instant before it skitters away.  
  
“You know,” Regina was saying, drinking from her own glass. “You're with somebody two years, you think you know everything about them. But he never stops surprising me.” A wondering shake of shivering coils. She laughs, and the corners of her eyes crinkle with a smile that makes Buffy catch her breath. “Even if it is with silly costumes.”  
  
Slayer sense, awake and hungry; ears pricked like a dog who thinks it hears its master calling. Regina. Beautiful and charming, sensuality implicit in her every move, possessed of a grace that leaves Buffy feeling awkward just sitting in her presence. But she lacks the serpentine flow of limbs and tongue that underscores every vampire's moves, and Slayer blood sings with nothing more than jealousy and a flash of something brighter, sharper, less recognizable, just beneath. Her skin is warm as it brushes against Buffy’s with the texture of cream and silk.  
  
 _Slayer?_  
  
“Well, you have to give him points for bravery.” Somewhere, she knows, sheltered and concealed, another set of blue eyes is watching her. “I'm... here with a friend.”  
  
“What's he wearing?” Regina asks, completely oblivious to her inner turmoil.  
  
 _Or maybe I’ve just gotten that good at hiding it._  
  
Buffy leans close, tells her, and Regina claps a hand over bubbling laughter, her eyes going wide. “Oh my God! I saw him! He looks like a giant cottonball!”  
  
They laugh together, close and warm, shoulders rubbing. _Like sisters_ , Buffy thinks—and then— _No, not like sisters at all._  
  
“He must really love you, to wear that.” Regina’s eyes are blue; open, honest, and they burn in an entirely different way.  
  
“Oh... no. I mean... we're just friends,” Buffy stutters. “I mean, there was this time where we—-but you know, not really and it just—-Oh look! Where's Rico going?”  
  
A dark-haired, fiery-eyed beauty in a red Spanish dress puts her hand on Rico’s waist, smiling up at him before they slip out a side door together.  
  
“Oh, they’re... probably just going to talk about business.” Regina fiddles with her glass, glancing out at the crowd for a long second. Then she turns to Buffy with another brilliant smile.  
  
“I should probably...”  
  
“Go make sure he doesn't get sidetracked,” Buffy supplies, flustered with relief, disappointment and sympathy all at once.  
  
“Yeah. He's always...” She makes a reaching gesture. “With the business,” she finishes with small laugh.  
  
“It was nice meeting you, Joan,” she says, looking Buffy straight in the eye. A brief touch of her hand, and then she disappears into the crowd, leaving behind warmth in Buffy's fingers and the scent of orchids on the air.  
  
*  
  
Two minutes to midnight and fifteen glasses of champagne later, Buffy spots Rico again. The Spanish Diva is nowhere to be seen, but another girl--dark-haired and fairer skinned—hangs on his arm and his every word as they laugh and talk.  
  
“Oh, Rico. You're so sexy,” the woman exhales, breathless and rapt. Anger courses through Buffy’s veins, swift and inexplicable, and she sweeps between them, skirts swirling like a tempest, before she even thinks about it.  
  
“Two-timing snake,” Buffy hisses, poking Rico in the chest. She's suddenly glad for the white satin mask that hides most of her upper face, feeling her cheeks burn hot beneath the cool fabric.  
  
He stares at her, eyes perplexed beneath his mask.  
  
“Don't I know you from somewh--?”  
  
“ _Excuse_ me,” the brunette says, pushing her way back in. Tiny, perfectly manicured fingers rise to the hips of her mermaid skirt, and she looks Buffy up and down like a piece of trash someone forgot to throw away. “We were _talking_.”  
  
“Oh _please_!” Buffy snorts, ignoring the woman completely as she pushes around her again. “How many women have you actually hooked with _that_ line?”  
  
He doesn't say a word, just stares at her, dumbfounded.  
  
“Okay, Little Miss Muffet,” the brunette begins, her voice thick with pretension, dripping derision. “Why don't you just—“  
  
“I'm _not_ Little Miss Muffet.” Impatience and annoyance finally boil over, flowing derision in her own voice. “Look! I’m carrying a shepherd’s staff!”  
  
“Rico! There you are!” Regina’s voice, thick and rich like honey and she pours onto the scene, fingers curling in the hem of his matador cape. “I've been looking everywhere for you.”  
  
The brunette deflates, sullen and pouty.  
  
“Oh... Rheaaaana,” Regina positively oozes, and Buffy watches in wonder while she shapes sarcasm into honest pleasure and pushes it out the other side like a form of Zen. Regina's hands light on the other woman’s face, fingertips holding her gently. “How _wonderful_ to see you.” Then, she leans close—too close—to the other woman, whispering as she winks and confides, “She's Little Bo Peep, by the way.”  
  
Glittering smile like a dagger, the force of all Regina’s formidable charm behind it, Rheanna clearly, and wisely, seems to decide to set out for greener and less taken pastures.  
  
Without missing a beat, Regina straightens and smiles at Rico. “Honey, have you met Joan?”  
  
He's staring at her.  
  
And if he thinks those confused, puppy-dog eyes and that mouth, sad and turned down at the corners like... like—  
  
So familiar.  
  
With those eyes. Those maddening, infuriatingly familiar eyes.  
  
And the key turns, and the lock clicks free.  
  
 _Two people kiss in a graveyard, playing like children at adult games, their laughter echoing off stern, disapproving angels that rise like ghosts from the ground mist. And then the sky opens, pouring rain down on them, and the ground falls away, and they run together, hand in hand, heart to heart, one pounding like thunder, the other still._  
  
“I think maybe I have.”  
  
His voice. It slips inside her, sinuous and dissonant, the sound of memory ringing clear.  
  
 _The most inevitable of dalliances; the sweetest of all moments. A girl's first time should be everything she’s always dreamed about, all the things she’s ever imagined. It should be pounding hearts and sweating palms and trembling lips and warmth and the secrets of skin—and for a moment, for one, single, thrilling moment, it is all those things._  
  
A grandfather clock sounds the hour from somewhere faint and far away, and Buffy turns her head toward the sound.  
  
“Midnight,” Regina says.  
  
All around them, people pull off their masks, laughing in surprise and delight, and champagne glasses rise like an armada to the sky.  
  
 _Another beat of her heart, and the hollowing of another. Words that are not his filling her, confusing her, and he is changing, he is **becoming** , and he is gone and she is alone but she doesn’t know what alone really means until he comes back and trembling hands plunge a sword into the heart of her beloved, sending him into the arms of Hell itself..._  
  
 _Close your eyes_  
  
As if that would make a difference. As if it ever had.  
  
As if in a dream, she carefully pulls the mask from her face, and turns to look at him.  
  
 _she is alone—_  
  
“Oh, God,” he breathes.  
  
 _her beloved—_


	2. Chapter 2

"Buffy?" She can hear her own incomprehensible disbelief reflected in the syllables of her name as they fall from his lips.  
  
"Angel."  
  
Regina—-if that's her name, and Buffy's strongly beginning to suspect that it's not—-glances at Buffy sharply as she speaks, then looks back at Angel, eyes unreadable.  
  
"You two... know each other." It's not a question. But the way she says it... Buffy suddenly understands that Regina doesn't have the first clue who Buffy is.  
  
"We're ah," Angel begins.  
  
"Old friends," Buffy finishes, voice faint.  
  
"Friends," Regina echoes, doubtful.  
  
"Right," Buffy says. "And now that we've done the whole catching up thing, I REALLY need to go." She takes a deep breath and turns, hurrying through the double doors.  
  
"Buffy!" Angel's voice, calling after her.  
  
She does the only thing she can. She runs.  
  
*  
  
Petticoats, heavy in her hand like the weight of memory, suffocating her, and she doesn't understand; doesn't know why this bothers her so much. After all, she's moved on, so why shouldn't he?  
  
_\--Two years—_  
  
Ever since she was a girl, all Buffy had ever wanted was to be normal. To have a family home with a white picket fence and a minivan, a couple of children, a dog, a cat. She could see that two story white home, with its dark red shutters and gauzy curtains and emerald green lawn so clearly in her mind that at times she could almost smell the grass, hear the sound of children playing, the errant, joyful bark of a dog. Could envision an infant cradled in her arms and larger, stronger arms wrapped lovingly around them both. She could picture that life so completely; mundane, and comforting, idyllic in its peace and simple living. She didn't know what she did there... maybe she worked at a bank, or sold real estate, or baked cookies, but it had never mattered. She just knew that she wanted it.  
  
Later, she'd still wanted to be normal, still dreamed of that house and its charms, her face always softly lit, diffused with yellow light that painted her in shades of joy. And she’d met him, and she’d known then the face behind the arms that would hold her one day.  
  
_It should be me. Doesn't he know it should be me?_  
  
_What the hell is wrong with you?_  
  
_He can't. He's not supposed to LOVE her--_  
  
_I can't breathe._  
  
*  
  
"Dammit!" Angel throws his mask through the air, not quite letting go of it, his face a riot of conflicted emotion.  
  
Nina breathes. Slowly collects herself. No one has explained anything yet, but she can work it out for herself. She's a big girl, and she knows love when she sees it. She just... didn't expect it. Not from him. Not from Angel. He was... stoic. Emotionally challenged guy. The kind of guy that she's still trying to wrestle the admittance of the emotion from, two years later.  
  
Angel twists and turns, like a paper cup caught in the wind.  
  
"Who is she?"  
  
Angel's eyes find hers, and she doesn’t like what she sees in them. Not at all.  
  
"Buffy."  
  
"That's a name. I asked who she IS."  
  
"Dammit. Nina. Todd and Colleen are about to start the speech. Karthos will be—"  
  
"Fine," she says, swirling her glass of champagne, eyes locked on the effervescent liquid. "Go."  
  
"I have to." His voice, so dark, filled with burden.  
  
"I know." She manages to meet his eyes, just barely, her smile like a ghost. "Go," she says again, leaning to kiss him gently.  
  
He goes, leaving her to the poison of her own imagination.  
  
*  
  
_It's nothing_  
  
_Bullshit! It's something! Did you see how he looked at her?_  
  
_That's paranoid. You're being silly._  
  
_Did he look silly when he looked at her?_  
  
She turns away from the internal voice that is hers but not quite hers at the same time, scans the crowd, moving slowly and deliberately, bright blue eyes roving restlessly.  
  
There.  
  
She moves along the edge of the room, glass in her hand like a talisman; the only thing that lets her move normally among this throng. It's the one thing she can cling to. Her sanity.  
  
She just wants to see his face. They don't have to speak. She just needs to know. No big deal.  
  
She moves past the man in her sights, glancing back to look at him, just once, full-on face—-  
  
"Oh, my God."  
  
Spike scowls out at her from inside his sheep costume.  
  
*  
  
"You," he says over a mug of beer, blue eyes cool as he looks her over, and she might have been a bug, a spot of lint on his jacket sleeve—-that is, if he’d been wearing a jacket, which he wasn't. He was, in fact, wearing the most ridiculous sheep costume she'd ever seen, which looked as if it had been glued together by a mad seamstress with too much time and too many cotton-balls.  
  
"Good to see you, too, Spike," she says, sliding into the chair across from him.  
  
He sighs and rolls his eyes, slumping moodily down in his seat as he resigns himself to her presence.  
  
"Been a while," she goes on, sipping from her glass.  
  
"Yeah," he scoffs with a rough laugh—-is that bitterness, she wonders? "Since before Angel decided to—-" He breaks off suddenly, sitting up and looking at her with intent surprise. "Is he here? With you?"  
  
Yep. That was bitterness, all right. She considers a moment before she nods in reply.  
  
"Bloody, buggering bastard," he snarls, rising from his seat faster than she can follow.  
  
"He thought it would be safer," she says, knowing how weak the words sound. "If he stayed away from you all. That anyone left from Wolfram & Hart would come after him."  
  
"Oh. He thought so, did he?" he chuckles, deep in his throat without humor, blue eyes cold as he regards her. "See he wasn't so worried about you being safe."  
  
"It's different with us," she says after a moment. "You know that."  
  
"Is it?" he asks with exaggerated interest, dark brows rising high on his face, and for just an instant, she thinks she sees something in his eyes. He's hurt, oh yes, but it's more than that. Almost as if—  
  
"We were family," he says suddenly, voice passionate. And then he recedes a little, shrugging mildly. "And... enemies. Later." Then he gathers his anger again and leans forward toward her, pointing an accusing finger. "But I stood with him at the end. And he just--leaves! In a billow of heroic trench coat, trotting off into the night without so much as a—-"  
  
"He did what he thought was best," she says quietly.  
  
He stands there, saying nothing, then finally shakes his head, chuckling again with nothing like humor. "He always does."  
  
"So," she says casually, sipping from her glass. "You're here with Buffy?"” Such a strange name, and the taste of it is even stranger on her tongue.  
  
"You.." Shadows and light sweep across his face, an intense display of so many emotions in such a small span that she cannot follow their course. "Did she see him?" he asks, suddenly, and there's something in his voice that's small, and pale.  
  
Everything she needs to know is right there; every fear, every worry, every image plucked from her imagination is written in the lines of his face like a distorted mirror.  
  
And he must see the answer to his own question in hers, because suddenly he deflates, sits down in his chair and stares moodily at his mug. "How'd that go, then?"  
  
"Who is she, Spike?"  
  
His brows shoot up in surprise, and then he slowly rolls his tongue against the inside of his cheek, blue eyes darkening with knowing. "You don’t know who she is." It’s not a question.  
  
"No. But I get the feeling maybe I should," she replies stiffly, feeling vulnerable beneath the dark lights that dance in his eyes.  
  
"Oh, luv," he says, and it's bewitching, the way he can twist so many emotions into words all at once; relish, sarcasm, sorrow and irony. "Have I got a story for you."  
  
*  
  
Nina throws down her purse as they step into the plush confines of the sterile hotel room, the motion itself thick with the frustration and confusion undeniable in her face.  
  
"Why didn't you ever tell me?"  
  
"Would it have made you feel better?" he asks meeting her gaze evenly.  
  
"Yes! Angel—people _talk_ about their feelings, about their past. Of course, I'm referring to _people_ , here," she shoots, her words sharp and filled with pain.  
  
"Do they?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because... it helps. Because people want to know."  
  
"So does it help?"  
  
She twists toward him, infuriated. "Not now, no. But if you'd told me from the beginning—"  
  
"Then you'd have been fine tonight," he concludes without conviction. "Buffy showing up wouldn't have bothered you at all."  
  
"God! Angel, that's not the point!"  
  
"What _is_ the point, Nina?" he asks, tiredly. "I could have told you all about her, what she meant to me, but all it would have done was hurt you."  
  
"You could have given me a chance." Her voice is guttural, thick with tears. And he knows--knows with sudden clarity that blooms, sharp and aching beneath his ribs--that she knows. That she'd seen the way they looked at each other. She had seen the question in Buffy's eyes and heard his heart betray his stoic face in reply.  
  
"Nina..." he takes her in his arms, shuddering bone beneath fragile skin. Takes a deep breath and sighs as he smooths her silky hair. "It doesn't matter. Buffy's in my past."  
  
She breathes hard against him, voice a whisper that will haunt him into his dreams tonight.  
  
"Not anymore."  
  
*  
  
When the sun breaks the horizon, Buffy gives up the illusion of sleep at last.  
  
She spends the day alone, traveling the expanse of sand white beaches beneath the blue, blue sky. It's a gorgeous day. The wind sifts though her hair, displacing errant strands, golden and gleaming against the brilliant white-gold sand background.  
  
Cancun is unlike anywhere else she's ever been on earth, its majestic white sand beaches crowned by an ocean of deepest blue, a sapphire of fathomless depths. The sky so close she could almost touch it. There is a sense of peace here, of life moving just a little slower, a lullaby that sings her soul to sleep.  
  
Angel could never walk beside her here.  
  
She'd been so young when she’d fallen in love with him. A different person than she was now. The last time she'd seen him, she’d been about to engage in the biggest fight of her entire life, and she'd given him silly speeches about cookie dough and maybe's. She’s no closer now to knowing who she is than she was then, but one thing she does know—-he's supposed to be there when she figures it out. She'd never really considered that he might move on, that there'd be someone else.  
  
She'd never really considered that she might lose him.  
  
She walks the shoreline, feet skimming cool blue water, eyes fixed on the distant horizon. And despite the tourists that swarm around her, she feels utterly and completely alone.  
  
When she gets back to the hotel, the sun is deep pink and swollen, dipping low in the sky.  
  
Angel's waiting for her.  
  
*  
  
"Hey."  
  
"Hi."  
  
Oh yeah. This is the scintillating conversation she's missed so much over the years.  
  
"Look, Angel..."  
  
"Buffy, I..."  
  
They look at each other for a moment, waiting, and then, in a way that would make her want to smile if it didn't hurt so damned bad, Angel looks at her in that way that says he's figured out that he's the one who’s supposed to speak first.  
  
"Buffy, I'm sorry for the way this happened. And I know you probably don't even want to see me at all, but I couldn't just leave things... let you leave without... saying something."  
  
Her smile is more of a grimace, and she ducks her face, nodding. "I know. We'll be leaving town in a couple of days, so we’ll just stay out of--"  
  
"No," he says, abruptly, and then pauses, looking sheepish at his own interruption. "I meant... it shouldn't have to be like this." He clears his throat, tries to meet her eyes. "Between us, I mean."  
  
"Just lucky, I guess." She shrugs.  
  
"It doesn’t have to be. We can be... adults, right?"  
  
She looks up at him with flat disbelief. "You're giving _me_ a speech about being an adult?" She blinks. "Regina put you up to this, didn't she?"  
  
"Her name's Nina." Angel gives a smile that's almost painful. "And she wants you to come to dinner with us."  
  
"Oh." Buffy stares at him for a moment, letting that register. "Oh. Well, gee, you know, I'd love to but I've got this whole mission thing going on where I'm trying to find a Slayer and—"  
  
"There's no Slayer."  
  
"What?"  
  
"No Slayer. Just me."  
  
The Spanish Diva. The costume. His disappearance.  
  
She stares, and he has the audacity to smirk.  
  
"What? You hadn't figured that out yet?"  
  
"I... was... working out a theory," she hedges, and it comes out sounding so lame she can hardly keep from rolling her eyes at herself. "A really... important theory. Big theory. Chock full of... theory-ness."  
  
His smirk curves into a smile, and she can’t help but smile back. And it shouldn’t hurt to see him like this, to look at him, to smile at him like this. But the pain in her chest is almost more than she can bear.  
  
"So we'll see you at dinner, then? Tonight?" He's so sweet, and earnest, and hopeful and sincere and awkward, oh God, awkward, but it's endearing. Just like it always used to be.  
  
"Sure. Dinner sounds..." --like the last thing I ever want to do on a very long and thorough list of things I never want to do—-  
  
"Great."  
  
*  
  
After he's gone, the façade crumbles and the feeling rises up inside her like the churning of winter winds, glittering ice storm, shards thrown and falling, sticking to her ribs, her stomach, her heart.  
  
He wasn't supposed to be this calm. Not while she was still so confused. And he definitely wasn't supposed to be this happy. Not without her.  
  
Dinner. He'd asked her to dinner. With his girlfriend. He didn't love her. He didn't want her. He hadn't even come to see her, he'd just come to try and make some kind of peace, to gloss this over, to smooth it out so that he wouldn't have to feel guilty anymore.  
  
She is lost, angry and hurting, but he isn't. He isn't. And he can't... can't know this. Can't see her like this, empty and aching and alone, and he isn't.  
  
She takes a deep, shuddering breath, air filling her, more emptiness to fill the empty places inside her like a balloon; skin as tight and twice as bloated. Stares in the mirror at herself, touching the black, wet rings beneath her eyes that make her look hollow and haunted.  
  
She reaches for a tissue to blot away their damning stain.  
  
She can't be stained when she sees him. She has to be brilliant smiles to bedazzle and tease his heart with longing that he should be the one to bring them to her lips. Coy eyes, perfectly shaded in hues of cerulean and sea foam that catch his and hold, bright and glittering depths that tell all the lies he wants to see and none of the truths that would kill them both.  
  
She stands in the stark light of the bathroom and paints her face with painstaking care until she can't see the breaking girl beneath the mask.  
  
*  
  
Dinner is everything she'd hoped it wouldn't be, and everything she'd known it would. She doesn't even know why she came, except that some part of her had wanted to see him again, had wanted to...  
  
What? See him with someone else? Make it undeniable and real and final so she could finally let go at last?  
  
Had she actually bought into that bit about her and Angel being adults?  
  
They make small talk, Nina poised and gorgeous and graceful, her face warm with smiles that don't quite reach her eyes, until at last Buffy can't stand it anymore.  
  
"Excuse me," she says, quietly rising. She doesn't look back, but she can see them in her mind’s eye, picture the table with their elegant dinners spread out before them, in their beautiful clothes, their eyes not surprised, watching her with sadness and knowing.  
  
She steps out the door and onto the beach.  
  
*  
  
She hardly makes it a dozen yards before she hears Angel behind her, and turns.  
  
"Buffy."  
  
His eyes are the center of the universe, they're everything, and she's going under, drowning in him, just the way she always used to do.  
  
"Help me out with something here," she says, and she’s surprised how steady her voice is—how arch and angry. "Nina; Regina. That, I get. But..." She looks at him for a long moment, searching for the words.  
  
"Rico?" she asks, incredulous.  
  
To his credit, Angel looks chagrined. "After... After Wolfram & Hart, I had to go undercover. That's why I came to Mexico." The admission is taut, uncomfortable, reluctantly given, like so much between them.  
  
"I needed an alias," he objects fervently, seeing her face.  
  
"But... Rico?"  
  
Finally, he looks down at the ground, sulky and petulant. "It's a Barry Manilow reference," he mumbles.  
  
"Copa Cabana?!" Disgust mixes with distress and a myriad of other emotions, and she feels on the verge of breaking down. "And God," she exclaims, pushing her hands through the air, "I can’t even believe I _know_ that song." She fixes him with a look. "You couldn't come up with anything better than that?!"  
  
"Buffy. I'm so sorry. I never meant for you—"  
  
"Do you love her?" she asks, and she can’t keep the desperate note from her voice, no matter that she tries.  
  
He answers her with a surprising reluctance, voice catching in his throat.  
  
"Not like I loved you."  
  
Loved. The word hits her like a blow, discordant syllables that reverberate and echo, crashing down the halls of her mind to shatter against her heart.  
  
His face softens, and he takes a step closer to her, and she can _feel_ him, the electric energy arcing between them, a tangible tantalization just out of her reach. She can feel the breath he draws from the air, its absence from her own lungs, feel the currents of the movement of his body. She breathes deep, closes her eyes—  
  
_Close your eyes_  
  
\--as if that alone might save her. From somewhere far off down the beach, a world away, comes the sound of brass band music, faint and faraway, like a distant dream.  
  
"Love," he says, voice a warm breath against her mouth. Sparks of electricity shoot through her as the air shaped by his mouth moves over her skin. Goose bumps spill down her spine, heat rushes between her thighs, and she is taut as a bowstring, straining on the edge of breaking.  
  
Fingers ghost over the line of her cheekbone, trailing fire and leaving fingerprints across her soul as indelible as time. She opens her eyes, and his face is a plea, an apology and an entreaty all at once, and she knows he is sorry in the instant before his mouth meets hers, knows, too, that he wants it just as much as she does.  
  
*  
  
When he kisses her, he thinks of yellow; delicate daffodils painted with light, peppers ripe and full, drenched with the taste of the sun. Waves pound against the shore in time with her heartbeat, the sound of their smooth crashing filling his ears, his mind, his heart, until all he can feel and taste and see and smell is her.  
  
It's wrong. He shouldn't be here like this with her, not when Nina's still sitting in the restaurant, her blue eyes sad and knowing. He knows it's wrong. But it doesn't _feel_ wrong. It feels right as rain, right as raw cookie dough in mint ice cream and the light scent of jasmine on the night air. He knows he should stop, pull away and turn his head, walk off down the beach like he’s walked away from her so many times, leave her heart sad and breaking against the uncaring sand, regret wedged in the soft places between his ribs. He knows all these things, and yet he can’t bring himself to stop, his heart singing a melody remembered, inexorable and irresistible.  
  
Angel Investigations, Wolfram & Hart, they have been his attempts at making a contribution to the world, his own special brand of justice, of making the world a right and better place. But they are nothing so much as a legacy begun by her that he has carried on like a prayer against the private war inside his heart; a lantern to bear against the darkness that lurks bone deep and whispers, beckoning. All his time spent in good deeds carried on in the name of salvation for the world and himself both—they have always been simple constructs, comforting cages to house his love and guilt, built with carefully constructed precision in her name, sanctuary and solitude all at once.  
  
And God help him, for the first time since he walked away from her six years ago, he feels free.  
  
"Angel?"  
  
His blood freezes, turning to ice, and his mouth stills, songs and dreams turned to dust.  
  
Buffy pulls away, face pale in the moonlight, eyes tortured and bright with tears, fingers touching her mouth, still warm and wet with his kiss.  
  
"Oh, God," she moans, and then she is gone, feet racing across tightly packed sand, leaving behind slight footprints that the sea slides in to reclaim.  
  
Gone, as if she had never been there at all, save the taste of daffodils and sunshine on his tongue.  
  
"Angel?" The tall grasses rustle; a dry, sharp hiss as Nina passes from the sparse stand of trees. "I thought I heard—-"  
  
"I kissed her." He doesn't turn, and she stills, the whisper of her bare feet against sand ceasing. He can hear her gasp, a sharp intake of breath above the endless rhythm of waves.  
  
He closes his eyes for a moment, gathers his courage, and finds there is only one thing to say. And even that can’t make this right. He turns, apology on his lips—  
  
One pale arm arcs against the moonlight, palm open and stinging as it meets the skin of his cheek.  
  
"Nina—-"  
  
"Shut up! You don't get to say you're sorry."  
  
He opens his mouth to speak, and she silences him with a look, her cheeks flushed with color against the trembling pale beauty of her face. For a long time, she just stares at him, blue eyes cool and even as she searches his for a response, and then, in a swirl of white silk, she steps up to him, hands on his stomach, her cheek sliding against his, breath hot and heavy, the warmth of her lips gliding over his skin. He stays still, waiting for her to speak, but she says nothing, nuzzling against him, mouth finding his with sweet, hot kisses. She tastes like lush hills and dark forests, spiced musk and moonlight as she pulls his coat from his shoulders, fingers gripping his arms, bruising as she pulls him hard against her.  
  
"Nina," he pulls away, trying to see her, needing to look at her.  
  
"What did she taste like?" Her eyes are twin fires in the darkness, filled with the luminescence of the moon.  
  
He looks away, and her hands dig in harder, muscle grinding painfully against bone. He winces and stares at her, and her expression is still intent, fierce and fixed as she stares back at him.  
  
"When you kissed her," she hisses. "What did she _taste_ like?"  
  
"I'm not doing this."  
  
"Like hell you're not. You _kissed_ her, Angel." A long draw of heavy breath. "What did she taste like?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Tell me!" Her voice is raw, filled with suffering and need and obligation. _You owe me this_ her eyes implore. She is near naked and shivering in the thin silk of her dress, a little girl afraid and alone, so fragile and aching beneath the impending darkness of the sky.  
  
"Truth, Angel. Tell me the truth."  
  
He supposes he owes her that much, yes.  
  
"Like sunshine," he whispers.  
  
"Good. That's good." A harsh nod, and he doesn't mistake it for approval, only bitter appreciation of his honesty. She pulls him close again and her lips glide over his, soft and warm, scarcely touching him, breathing hot into his mouth.  
  
"What do I taste like?" she asks, syllables flush with heat as her tongue flickers across his lips, into his mouth.  
  
He shudders against her, trying to hold on to his mind. "Moonlight," he answers truthfully, ragged and low. "Wilderness."  
  
She grabs him by the collar of his shirt, eyes flashing open. In them, he can see ancient trees, green and towering among a tangle of vines, sense the secret places of thickets and windfalls.  
  
"But it's sunlight you long for, isn't it?"  
  
"All vampires long for—-"  
  
"Isn't it?" she growls, shaking him.  
  
"Yes." He closes his eyes, the word falling from his lips like a betrayal.  
  
"Good. Very good," she rewards him roughly, running her hands up into his hair, turning her face into his throat, tongue tracing slow circles against thin skin.  
  
"Nina. I'm sor—-"  
  
"Shh," she soothes, pressing a warm finger against his mouth, stilling the words. Her tongue traces down the edge of his ear with agonizing slowness. "I bet you were so sweet and gentle when you fucked her, weren't you?" she asks, one hand sliding down his body, finding him hard and trembling. "Reverent, even. Worshipped her like a goddess, like her virginity was a perfect pearl to be plucked." Her tongue swirls into his ear as she whispers, and it's the sensation as much as her words that send a thrill through his every nerve, guilty, sickening and excited all at once.  
  
"But that's not how you wanted to fuck her, was it?" Her breath is a tattoo against his flesh, fluttering inside his mind with sensual, gossamer strokes that paint him with need. She traces the inner curve of his ear, flicking her tongue against it, her hand grasping the width of his cock through his pants and squeezing. He gasps and stiffens, arching his body into her, and he can feel her mouth curl in a smile against him.  
  
"No," she whispers knowingly. "I know you, Angel," she said, her voice the only sound in existence. Zipper slowly sliding, warm night air and fingers against bare skin, caressing and squeezing with relentless rhythm. "You wanted to take her like an animal, make her cry and beg for you. You wanted to fuck her raw, mark her, make her come so hard that she'd be yours forever."  
  
His cock twitches in her hand and he moans, deep in the back of his throat. Nina pulls back to look at him, the smile on her face knowing and satisfied.  
  
"Fuck me, Angel," Nina whispers, nipping and catching his lower lip between unrelenting teeth, breath almost pained with feverish hunger as it fills him. She draws away, taking his lip with her for a moment before releasing, and he can taste blood in his mouth, coppery and sweet.  
  
"Fuck me like you want to fuck her." Her eyes so consumed with need that they border on madness beneath the moon. "Show me what it feels like to be sunshine."  
  
God, he can _smell_ her, dripping wet between her thighs, and something inside him breaks open, rusted hinges screaming as he throws her to the sand and falls on top of her, kissing her, body arching into her as he rips her dress up over her hips. Reaches down between her legs and moans when he finds wetness there, satin clinging to hot flesh. He hooks a finger beneath the damp satin, brushing over her clit, then pulls her panties aside, burying himself inside her with a single thrust of his hips.  
  
Her fingernails rake trails of fire up the length of his back, pulling his shirt up as they tear at him, and he hisses in pain that is nearly pleasure, hips jerking back and slamming inside her again.  
  
*  
  
And through it all, Buffy watches from behind a narrow copse of trees, her heart pounding and breaking against her breast, wetness slick between her thighs, her mind a dull roar of white noise.  
  
He had kissed her. She could still feel the warmth where his mouth had been. He had kissed her, and now...  
  
She watches until they both cry out, loudly enough to reach her ears, and then the spell that held her there, motionless, finally breaks at last, and she runs as fast as her feet will carry her back to her hotel room.  
  
*  
  
"What was it like when you were together?"  
  
"Nina..."  
  
"No. Tell me." Soft as silk, strong as steel, clamping like iron bands around his heart. _You owe me this much._  
  
He sighs and looks away, somewhere off into the middle distance where memories dance and twist like half remembered dreams.  
  
"When I..." He snaps his teeth together, grits his jaw, wrestling between kindness and truth. He looks to her again, desperate and silently pleading. He loves her, this sweet, powerful blonde woman with mischievous eyes and a gentle heart. Doesn't she know that? Isn't it enough?  
  
_Don't make me.  
  
You owe me this much._  
  
"I had nothing to live for," he begins, simply. "And she... she was this beautiful girl..." He breaks off, shakes his head, envisioning her in his mind; soft blond hair and glowing smiles, sad eyes and fading hope. "So strong, so fragile. Burden of the world on her shoulders, and yet she smiled, she laughed, she... Loved me." Eyes soft with memory, but oh, so bitter. "I had nothing to live for, and she was everything... everything I wished I could be. I did so many horrible things, Nina. I could never count the cost, could never believe in forgiveness..."  
  
"Until you met her," Nina finishes, swallowing hard against the words.  
  
"It wasn’t fair," he grates, letting her statement stand without reply. "I hung all my hopes and dreams on her. I made her into the altar of my salvation and worshipped at her feet."  
  
"Did she save you?"  
  
He presses his lips into a thin, white line, everything inside him pricking and sharp, the jagged angle of his heart cutting against his chest. The sound of Angelus's laughter echoes in his mind, flapping around him like bat wings.  
  
"I broke her."  
  
"Did she forgive you?"  
  
A bitter, hollow laugh escapes him and he rubs a hand across his jaw, shaking his head. "Of course she did," he says with sour irony. Then, again, more quietly, with finality, "Of course she did."  
  
Nina lies next to him on the sand, silent and unmoving save the rise and fall of her chest. Waves roll and crash against the shore ceaselessly and he can hear eternity in the sound, restless and unending.  
  
"There's nothing I can say that can turn her from an ideal back into a real girl again, is there?" she asks, voice soft.  
  
He takes her hand in his, squeezing her fingers tight, trying to stop the aching of his own heart with the pressure.  
  
"You still love her." Courage, tattered and peeling, clinging to her by threads stretched thin and fine as spider webs.  
  
He doesn't answer.  
  
*  
  
Buffy lies awake in the hard, hotel bed, eyes open wide and unseeing as they stare into darkness. From somewhere far off, the clock ticks off slow seconds that creep into minutes, and she can hardly hear them above the beating of her heart.  
  
In her mind's eye, they are vicious and virile beneath the moon, two wild animals that tear and claw at each other in passionate frenzy. The muscles in his back ripple with Herculean effort as he thrusts desperately inside her—-  
  
Me. It should have been me—-  
  
No, don't think about that—-  
  
\--and she can feel him, rock hard and unyielding, stretching her, filling her, thrusting and pulling so hard that her body rocks with uncontrolled rhythm, hands digging into her shoulders, holding her in place as he fucks her relentlessly, unrestrained need and passion laid bare upon his face for her, all for her—-  
  
Her fingers slip down inside her jeans, between her thighs, body pulsing and straining until she explodes with a strangled cry.  
  
Sleep takes a much longer time to arrive.


	3. Chapter 3

Outside, the sun shines, bright and merry caressing warmth that spills down over the people in the villa square below. A migrating pattern of colored cloth and tanned skin, they walk and talk and smoke and laugh, alive and carefree as if filled by the light that shines on them. As if no one in the world has died or gone hungry today, and the whisper of rain is a fairy tale that someone imagined once. Watching them, Nina can almost pretend that she isn't falling apart. Can almost forget how she fought soul-hard and teeth-bared to win his heart.  
  
A needlepoint pinprick of light glints in the distance, diamond bright and blinding as it pierces her eyes. She wipes away the tears before they can trickle through her lashes, reaching for her sunglasses.  
  
The light doesn't hurt nearly so much as the truth.  
  
On the bed behind her, he stirs, whispering cotton over bare skin, and her fingers itch for its texture.  
  
"What are you doing?" His voice low, buttery rich like brandy, pours through her with a slow, languid burn.  
  
"Waiting," she whispers. Lifts her eyes and stares out over the ocean, secrets and fears locked away behind dark sunglasses where he will never see.  
  
*  
  
Buffy wakes, sitting up and blinking blearily against morning sunlight, scattered images and shards of white-hot metal already clanging and clattering inside her mind.  
  
A sharp rap sounds once from the door, booming hollowly through silence.  
  
Rumpled and wrinkled, still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, she goes to the door, hope in her heart and heart in her throat.  
  
“God. You look like hell,” Spike says, his very brows smirking with the comment.  
  
She rolls her eyes and begins to slam the door shut, but he puts his arm out, catching it halfway.  
  
“Found these outside your door. Thought you might want them.”  
  
He thrusts a bouquet of lush, black flowers at her.  
  
“From the poof, I’m guessing,” he says with dry sarcasm.  
  
She stands frozen, staring at the flowers, feeling her eyes prick with tears. There’s a note there, nestled among the soft, black petals, and she can’t imagine what it could possibly say. Can’t dare to let herself hope.  
  
Slowly, Spike’s face rearranges itself into an expression of concern. And God, the love there. The tenderness for her. Why couldn’t Angel—  
  
“Buffy? You all right? What did he—“  
  
“Nothing.” Voice dull and flat, empty for a moment, and then laughter bubbles up from her chest, black and thick. “Nothing at all.”  
  
She turns and walks away from him, sitting down on the edge of the bed.  
  
He stands there for a long moment, flowers in his hand, and then finally steps inside, closing the door behind him.  
  
“You want to talk about it?”  
  
“No,” she says, wiping at her eyes. “God no.”  
  
He nods, sits down beside her on the bed. “Don’t know what he sees in dog girl, anyway.”  
  
“Maybe that she’s older, more experienced, prettier,” she offers with a pained glance at the ceiling.  
  
“Shut your mouth.” The anger inside him, always just below the surface, spills out and boils over. “Girl can’t hold a candle to you, and if that bloody wanker can’t see it then he doesn’t deserve you.” He leans low, trying to find her eyes with his, intense and deep, deep blue.  
  
“Buffy. Why are you wasting your time? You’re better than this. Better than him.”  
  
She shakes her head wordlessly, eyes finally spilling over. She clamps a hand over her mouth to stifle a sob, and sees Spike wince in pain that’s only slightly sympathetic.  
  
“You still love him.” _Like you’ll never love me_ , he doesn’t add, but she hears it anyway.  
  
Why can’t she love him?  
  
His eyes ask her that same, silent question, every day.  
  
“Buffy...” He reaches for her hand, and suddenly it’s all too much, filling her, flooding her, overflowing, and all she wants is to be touched and held and stroked and—  
  
She grabs his hand, pulls him to her, mouth meeting his hungrily with the taste of salt.  
  
He stiffens in surprise for an instant, blue eyes wide, and God, the innocence there, the hope. Fluttering closed as he relaxes against her, falling into the kiss, hand coming up to touch her cheek, and she pushes him back, falling onto the bed on top of him.  
  
“This isn’t about me.” Cupping her face in his hands, searching for some kind of answer in her eyes.  
  
“Does it matter?”  
  
He stares for what seems like eternity, throat swallowing hard with an audible click, and shakes his head. “No.”  
  
But it does. She knows it does. She knows it does and she doesn’t care because all she wants is to forget, and it isn’t right, isn’t fair to him—  
  
“Buffy.” Voice low and gritty, steeped in gruff tenderness. He brushes her hair back from her face, mouth smiling in a way that isn’t really a smile. “I know what I am to you.” A farce, a replacement, a stand-in body, that grim smile proclaims, and he’s right, he is all those things, but he’s more than that, too, because he loves her.  
  
And she needs that. Needs it so much.  
  
She unzips her jeans and kicks out of them, climbs atop him and pulls out his cock, in a fluid, transitioning move that doesn’t leave time for thought. She gasps as she thrusts down against him without ceremony, swallowing him inside her with one violent thrust, and then twists her hips, riding him into blessed oblivion, her only awareness the delicious friction between her legs, his hands on her breasts, tweaking and pinching taut nipples, rides him until the stars spin inside her mind, exploding in a shower of sparks that leaves her screaming and gasping and ultimately empty.  
  
*  
  
“Spike. I have to go.”  
  
The set of her shoulders is hard and her jaw is squared and he knows better than to ask, he really does, but he’s never been able to help himself from being such a masochist.  
  
“Got a hot date, then, do you?” he asks casually as he buckles his pants, taking a deep drag from the cigarette between his lips.  
  
She doesn’t answer, but he knows what she thinks, where she’s going. And even if he didn’t already know, it’d be written in the crimson flush of her cheeks, the uneven rhythm of her breath--the spark of anticipation in her eyes.  
  
“So what do you think’s going to happen, luv? Think the caveman will scoop you up in his big strapping arms and carry you back up here to make sweet love to you behind his beloved’s back?”  
  
Her mouth turns down at the corners and thins, sparkle in her eyes gone flat and cold.  
  
“I would never do that.”  
  
“Oh, of course not,” he scoffs, exhaling smoke. “Wouldn’t be fair to Angel, right?”  
  
She stares at him as if he might be an exceptionally dumb, small child. “It wouldn’t be fair to either one of them.”  
  
Right. Of course. To either one of _them_.  
  
“I knew it wasn’t about me.” An arch laugh from numb lips, the sound itself bewildered as it falls against the air.  
  
Her eyes flicker up to meet his, and for just an instant, she looks wounded. “You told me it didn’t matter.”  
  
“I lied.”  
  
She flinches away, her face hard. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Her voice is flat, the voice of an ATM machine performing its automated functions.  
  
_“Thank you. Please come again.”_  
  
His hands clench in fists of rage, and he wants nothing more than to turn in a melodramatic sweep of billowing duster, leave her standing, teary-eyed and confused, alone without his support, without his love, without all the things he gives without question. See how well she does, then.  
  
But he can’t. And he won’t. And they both know it, and he hates it. Hates himself for it.  
  
Two years as partners, confidantes, sharing blood, sweat, and kills, living in this twisted not-a-relationship. Two years of silently loving her, of watching her want to love him back and not quite being able to.  
  
“Buffy... Luv.” His fingers reach out, tremble against her face, pad of his thumb tracing the curve of her lower lip, fingertips resting against the cradle of her cheek, his whole body shaped like the question he dares not ask, hoping desperately that she’ll turn her face into the palm of his hand, or hell, that she’ll even just _allow_ him the peace of touching her.  
  
But she pulls away, leaves his heart stinging and his hand empty, aching for the touch of her skin.  
  
Like a dive into the wild, like poems holding him, and he can’t get her out of his mind. He sees, he knows, knows more than he could speak, and still he’s blind. She’s like a drug, and his blood screams for her, screams for her hands on his skin, like heroin in his veins.  
  
“I’m right here, luv. Waiting for the bloody crumbs to fall from your table, hanging on your bloody every word. I’d never have walked away from you—never have.”  
  
“I know.” Quiet and solemn, truth that cuts him to the quick.  
  
“Why won’t you love me?” he implores, arms spreading wide.  
  
“I don’t know.” The words are twisted up in a sob, and she stares out at him from beneath tear-fringed lashes.  
  
“Right.” His arms fall in time with his heart, dropping like a leaden weight that settles in the pit of his stomach.  
  
“Well then.” He stares at her for a long moment, hope beating bright within his chest, but she is closed to him, her eyes veiled except for a pain whose source he does not know.  
  
He leaves her that way.  
  
*  
  
Nina sits in the patio of the hotel restaurant, beneath a woven ceiling of beach grass, sunlight filtering through it in tiny squares, painting odd shapes on her pale face. Eyes hidden behind the safety of large, black sunglasses, mouth wrapped around the filter of a cigarette, she drags deep and lets smoke escape from between ruby red lips in swirling gray clouds that wreath her head, painting her against the exotic backdrop like an ethereal vision.  
  
Buffy exits the restaurant, stepping out onto the patio, gray-green eyes searching the faces there. She’s beautiful. Hair like honey, thick and textured against her rounded face, eyes ringed in gray kohl and lids brushed with pale blue, lips full and deep pink, glistening like glass. Behind one ear she has tucked a flower, deftly twisting it into the upward swirl of her hair. Black petals reflect iridescent purple, velvety rich as they curl over her left cheek, stark, striking contrast to her light coloring, and Nina smiles, hard and quick as she reaches for her glass, swirling the amber liquid within before lifting it to her mouth and tossing it down.  
  
At last, those haunting eyes find hers, gazes locking across the room with an almost audible click. Buffy hesitates, her whole body uncertain as she stands on the threshold of some imagined show-down, and Nina can see the reluctance in her, the pain, the fear. Can almost smell it radiating from the younger girl in waves.  
  
From her lap, Nina pulls an identical black flower, holding it up in invitation and explanation.  
  
Understanding shines in Buffy’s eyes, sudden and harsh, and there is another brief moment of hesitation before she walks reluctantly to the table, like a prisoner being led to the gallows.  
  
She sinks into the chair beside Nina, resigned and sullen as she folds her arms over her chest.  
  
“You sent the flowers.”  
  
“I did.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
Nina shrugs, fingering her empty glass with longing. “I wanted to talk to you.”  
  
“You could have just asked.” Condescending and reproachful.  
  
“Would you have come?”  
  
Buffy looks away, something sad in the set of her face.  
  
“That’s what I thought.” Nina nods and pulls the sunglasses from her face. “Would you like a drink?”  
  
Buffy’s eyes are flinty now, something mocking in the smile that tugs the corners of her lips. “You always hit the bottle before siesta?”  
  
“You always kiss other women’s boyfriends?”  
  
Buffy blinks, and if Nina were anyone else, she might mistake the reaction for surprise, but she knows a flinch when she sees one.  
  
Her eyes flicker down to Nina’s empty glass. “What are you drinking?”  
  
“Scotch.”  
  
Buffy wrinkles her nose, and there is derision in that expression, but it’s adorable, too, and Nina feels a flash of hatred shoot through her, bright and sharp and glimmering red. How dare this woman be so beautiful, so engaging and adorable?  
  
“You want a glass of milk?” The words are out before Nina can stop herself, and she glances down, suddenly shame-faced.  
  
And amazingly, Buffy laughs, startling her from her shame, an answering smile leaping to her own lips. A look at the other girl, surprise fading fast as she sees the genuine humor there, and the ice melts, both of them laughing together until they get hold of themselves again.  
  
It’s a release, and Nina feels a weight slip from her chest that she hadn’t even known was there.  
  
“I’m sorry—“ They both start to say, and Nina chuckles again, motioning for Buffy to go first.  
  
“I... What happened…” The younger girl looks suddenly shy, her eyes not quite able to hold Nina’s. “It just... happened. It didn’t mean anything.” She pulls her shoulders toward her body in tight shrug, longing and sadness in her eyes, and Nina’s heart flickers, straining toward her.  
  
“Yes it did,” Nina says quietly.  
  
“He loves you,” Buffy says, and now she does look at Nina, eyes filled with fathomless sorrow. “I can see it.”  
  
“Not like he loves you.”  
  
Buffy looks away, and Nina can see the truth of her own words reflected in those eyes. Sadness, yes, but not just for herself; for Nina, too.  
  
She thinks back two nights and lifetime ago, to when she’d first met this woman. There had been strength in her when she’d faced down the lecherous faux-vampire. Strength and eyes that were both innocent and somehow ancient, eyes that had seen more than Nina had ever imagined, more than any girl her age should ever have had to see. And yet, when she smiled, her whole face lit up like the sun rising, chasing away the shadows in her eyes. Only people who love hard, people who love beyond all reason and without care for the consequences could muster as much sadness as Nina sees in her now, could shut themselves off so completely. Nina knows this. She knows this because she knows Angel.  
  
And Nina sees it—-oh yes, she sees it, has seen it since the moment she laid eyes on this woman. She knows what it is that makes Angel love this girl so bright and hard.  
  
Nina would have loved her, too.  
  
Fingers tremble, reaching out, and she caresses sun-kissed skin. A moment of surprise, and a muscle twitches beneath the calm of the younger girl's face. Their eyes lock in a heated moment of understanding, and Nina wants to feel it, wants to touch that sadness and sunshine in her, draw it out of her and take it into her own heart.  
  
Mouths soft and feather light, lipstick glide as they move together, thick and slightly sticky as it smears. Deep pink and berry red, the taste of wine and cigarettes and bubblegum, and Nina whimpers at the back of her throat as their tongues meet, slick and sliding.  
  
This is what Angel tastes when he kisses each of them. This is what they both want and can never have. Buffy wants to be her and she wants to be Buffy, but the joke is on both of them because Nina has his body and Buffy has his heart and they are opposite sides of the same coin, images transposed and hearts juxtaposed, and if they could just meld themselves into one girl they could have everything they ever wanted.  
  
_And all that’s best of dark and bright meet in aspect in their eyes..._  
  
Their kiss is desire, longing, wishes unfulfilled, each of them wanting to capture something of the other, each of them wanting to know the other as they have been known by another. Warm stroking of fingers on skin, tangling in golden blonde strands. Buffy moans and Nina’s hands drift lower, skimming the curve of Buffy’s throat, tracing lines across the plane of her collarbone.  
  
Slowly, they draw apart, eyes locking again as they pull away, breathless and flushed.  
  
“That was...” Buffy breathes. “I... I shouldn’t have.”  
  
“Did you want to?” Nina asks, voice gentle, heart thumping.  
  
Buffy thinks for a moment, lovely face creasing, and one corner of her mouth turns up in the sweetest, shyest smile Nina thinks she’s ever seen. It’s as much an answer as if she’d spoken.  
  
She rises from her seat suddenly, cheeks a deeper pink than when she entered, shyness and fire mixed together in a rosy blush.  
  
“I’d better go.”  
  
Nina lets her, watching the graceful sway of her body until she disappears beyond the door.  
  
*  
  
Nina isn’t surprised when Spike slides smoothly into the chair beside her twenty minutes later.  
  
“Smoke?” he asks, looking like the cat who’s licked up all the cream. He proffers the pack, and she takes one, holding it to her lips. He lights it for her, then snaps the Zippo shut with a practiced, easy move, eyes never leaving hers.  
  
“Read the card, you know. Knew it was you. Too bloody smooth to be Angel’s work.” His mouth twists in a hard smirk as he regards her, eyes glimmering dark blue.  
  
“What are you playing at, luv?”  
  
“I...” She lifts one shoulder, forming a half-shrug and sighs in a cloud of smoke. “I just... had to see. Had to know...” She shakes her head, letting the thought trail.  
  
He sprawls back in the chair, chuckling as he drags on his own cigarette and slowly shakes his head, eyes cynically traveling the expanse of tables and chairs spread out around them.  
  
“The only thing there is to know is that we’re the replacements, luv. We’re marionettes who dance willingly while they pull the strings because we hope that somehow, someday, we’ll be enough. But we’re not. Never will be. This is their movie, their star-crossed lovers play, and we’re just actors who recite our lines and burn with hope beneath the spotlights... and they never really see us or hear us at all.”  
  
_\--Sand against her skin, Angel’s hands on her body--_  
  
“That’s... dismal.”  
  
He laughs again, a grating sound bereft of humor. “But true.”  
  
“You had sex with her, didn’t you?” she asks, mind flashing with sudden insight.  
  
_\--Show me what it feels like to be sunshine--_  
  
He stares at her for a long time, something indefinable in the planes of his face, and silent understanding passes between them, sodden and soiled and clinging to final shreds of hope.  
  
“Yeah,” he says and shrugs as if to say “what of it?”, the sound of leather crinkling with the movement, and the set of his face is hard, but there’s something fragile just out of reach behind that tough façade.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because that’s my role. I go through the motions and I play my part, and I take what I can get whenever I can get it, because it’s a damned site better than nothing.”  
  
“That’s sad.” Words given slowly, quietly, not without sympathy.  
  
His eyes find hers again, glinting with knowing. “You ought to know.”  
  
_“Fuck me, Angel.”_  
  
The clock ticks on the wall, the sound filling her head.  
  
_“What are you doing?”_  
  
_“Waiting.”_  
  
Counting off the minutes, the seconds, her time slipping away like sand until...  
  
Until he leaves her.  
  
She swallows hard against the last of her scotch and pushes the glass away.  
  
*  
  
“Buffy?”  
  
Angel. His face soft, questioning as he stands beyond the threshold of her room.  
  
“I... I had to see you.” He stands straight, pushes his hands down into his pockets and shifts uncomfortably, his eyes barely skimming hers. “I wanted to say.” He hesitates, swallows thickly. “I’m sorry. For last night.”  
  
But he dips his head down as he says it, and she knows it isn’t true. He’s not sorry that he did it. Sorry for confusing her, maybe, for being disloyal to his girlfriend and complicating things. But he’d wanted it just as much as she had. She knows, and there’s nothing she can say, nothing she can do, except nod her head dully in acceptance.  
  
She and Angel side by side in silence again, never speaking a word of what they want, same clever dance they’d woven throughout the years. And there are a thousand things she wants to say, a million more she wishes she could do, but none of it is hers to give.  
  
When she doesn’t speak, doesn’t look at him, he takes a step closer, voice husky and near, too near. “Buffy?”  
  
His eyes. Oh, God, those eyes. And if she kissed him again, right now, would he let her? Would he let her pull him inside the room and have what they’d never gotten to have before? What she knows they can have, now?  
  
“I’m sorry, too.”  
  
The smell of him, the feel of him, so close, and so hard to remember that this is forbidden territory, when it had been hers for so long. She can still taste Nina on her lips, smell smoke in her clothes, and she wonders if that makes them even, now.  
  
“Angel, you should go.”  
  
He looks so surprised and stricken, she nearly laughs aloud, despite herself.  
  
“Not because I want you to. But because... I like her. And she doesn’t deserve...”  
  
“No. She doesn’t.”  
  
“I wish I could hate her.” The words fall from her lips without thought, leaving her surprised with their truth.  
  
Angel’s mouth twists in a humorless smirk as he walks away.  
  
“I’m pretty sure she feels the same way about you.”


	4. Chapter 4

Nina drags heavy on her cigarette, staring at the platinum haired man across from her with a feeling like trepidation in her heart.  
  
“Why do you love her, Spike?”  
  
He blinks once at the unexpected question, eyes narrowing suspiciously on her. And then he must see something in her expression, because all at once he looks away, fingers fiddling with his cigarette.  
  
“She’s the best woman I’ve ever known,” he says simply, with a shrug. “The way she shines? She’s always shined like that.” He nods. “Saw it, even when I was evil.” He shrugs. “She’s not perfect. Insecure about her looks, her lovers, her brains. Whines and bitches, and sometimes she’s _such_ a girl.” He gives a soft snort of annoyance and appreciation all at once. And then his expression softens as he goes on, eyes staring out on the horizon of memory.  
  
“But if she cares about you... if she decides you’re worth loving, or even just believing in… she’ll make you believe it, too. And once you know that… you’ll follow her to the ends of the earth, just hoping to get a taste of that light. Hoping she’ll _see_ you.”  
  
“I wanted her to just be his hero,” Nina says, softly. “A girl-shaped ideal made of aspirations. But I knew the second I saw them together... I just knew.”  
  
“They’re _soul mates_.” Spike drawls out the word, rolling his eyes, and sarcasm itself bows before his mastery over it.  
  
“Soul mates?”  
  
“Yeah,” Spike says flatly, arching his brows at her. “Haven’t you heard? They’re the reincarnation of Joan of bloody Arc.” Shakes his head. “Martyrs. Just _love_ to sit around and mope about how they can only die one more time for the masses,” he says with an arch exhale of cigarette smoke, and even his leather crackles with sarcasm. “It’s sodding perfect.”  
  
“Jealous?” she asks with a bemused arch of blonde brows.  
  
“Aren’t you?” he asks, meeting her gaze evenly.  
  
She looks away first.  
  
“Even if they’re not soul mates, he still loves her,” Spike challenges, leaning toward her across the table. “What are you going to do about it?”  
  
Nina purses her lips, drags deep from her cigarette, then stubs it out in the ashtray, exhaling with a certainty like brittle steel. She looks sideways at Spike, meeting his gaze across the table.  
  
“I’m going to let him.”  
  
His eyes widen fractionally, going distant with surprise and slowly, after a moment, contemplation. He lets the weight of his thought carry in his expression for a moment, and then he arches one dark brow and shrugs, settling back into his seat in a slow sprawl.  
  
“You want a drink?” he asks.  
  
“Fuck yes.”  
  
*  
  
“You really do like it rough, don’t you?” Spike’s voice moans into her ear, hot breath and hotter mouth devouring sensitive flesh with pricking teeth and teasing tongue.  
  
Breasts pressed flat against the cool hotel wall, skirt hiked up around her waist, one of his rough hands digging into the hollow of her hip, holding her possessively as his cock pumps in and out of her from behind, the other hand straying between her legs, finding things to play with, rolling, rubbing, teasing in time with his relentless rhythm. She tries to speak and keens instead, orgasm seizing her hard and fast.  
  
Spike groans, then cries out, body stiffening against her, and she can feel him pulse inside her, filling her with fluid warmth. He holds her there a moment, leaning against her with all his weight, sagging into her, cock still rock-hard inside her, his mouth like fire against the curve of her neck as he breathes, ragged and shivering, into the hollow there. After a long moment, he slides from her and draws away, his mouth leaving her last, a final nip of pointed teeth against her pulse-point.  
  
She stays there for a long time, trying to catch her breath, legs still spread wide, breasts still pressed flat and cold, aftershocks shuddering through her. When they resolve themselves into a low, pleasant warmth, she slowly turns, pulling her skirt back down over hips. Spike is splayed out naked across the bed, grandiose in his unabashed nudity, a cigarette already clenched in one hand as he watches her with a knowing half smirk.  
  
She takes a deep breath, feels cool air move over her nipples, and pulls her shirt back down, looking him over just as unabashedly as he displays himself for her. So beautiful, pale skin like milk, sharp planes and angles between the muscled places, body like a dancer, cock still impressive, even in its diminished, satiated state.  
  
“Wow,” she breathes. “That was...”  
  
“Amazing? Incredible? Best orgasm of your life?” he offers with falsely modest generosity, brows rising.  
  
“I was gonna go with dysfunctional.”  
  
And Spike throws back his head, laughing like that might be the funniest thing he’s ever heard.  
  
“Hell, luv,” he says, leveling his eyes on her with a grin that is as genuinely amused as it is bitter. “There’s dysfunctional, and then there’s... whatever the hell _this_ is.”  
  
*  
  
Angel watches as the last pinks and purples drain from the sky, the veil of night covering the sky with sparkling splendor.  
  
When the sun sinks fully and darkness claims the world at last, the door to the room swings open, as if on cue.  
  
“Where have you been?” he asks without turning.  
  
“I kissed her, too.” No preamble, no leading in with guilt ridden tones and overt apologies; just simple truth. A statement of fact that loosens his jaw muscles, turning them to jelly, and he gapes, openly and stupidly, as he turns to look at her.  
  
“What?!”  
  
“I kissed her, too,” she says again, briefly, almost perfunctory as she crosses the room and sets down her purse in one of the chairs by the window. She stands there, gazing out upon the city below, a strange, half-smile quirking at the corners of her mouth, bitter and sweet all at once.  
  
“I thought… why should you have all the fun?” She stares out across the clay rooftops of the city, an expression caught in deep cerulean that he can’t decipher.  
  
“Nina.” The ache that grips him is complete, a symphony of destruction that sings through every nerve in his body like a million, tiny, live wires.  
  
She still doesn’t turn, her profile cast in yellow lamplight and deep shadow, and he wants to step toward her, take her in his arms, protect her from this, but how can he protect her from himself?  
  
“I don’t belong here,” she says, simple and soft, her head tilting to the side, curtain of blonde hair falling toward him, obscuring her face almost entirely.  
  
“Don’t say that.” His voice is a dull ache, broken and resigned, so lacking in conviction that even he is surprised.  
  
“It’s true. I never belonged here.” She tilts her head back up, considering the world outside, contemplating. “I was only a layover on the way to the destination.”  
  
“Nina.” His voice finds strength at last, a sad, sad, sorrowful reprimand that is as angry as it is desolate, and his muscles tremble with the effort of sitting still.  
  
“You love her.” Her eyes find his at last, and he wishes fervently that they hadn’t. He can’t stand the truth in them, the love in them, slowly ebbing and dying. Her words crack against the air with the force of a whip, and he flinches, stricken by the way they fall.  
  
For all his deeds, for all his heroism, struggling and straining against the darkness, he is nothing more than this; a man, still in love with a woman who will never belong to him, loved by a woman he will never belong to.  
  
She turns away again, not wanting to see the shame implicit in his face, perhaps, and folds her arms over her chest.  
  
“I had sex with Spike.”  
  
He recoils as if slapped, rising from the bed. “What?”  
  
Something primitive and dark comes alive inside him, raving and snarling, feral in its complete and utter rage.  
  
And she only stands there, shaking her head, oblivious, something sad and distant in her eyes.  
  
“You idiot,” she says, not unkindly. “Can’t you see I’m trying to make this easy on you?”  
  
“Easy?” he thunders, exploding as he leaps half the distance of the room to face her. “You think hearing you fucked SPIKE is _easy_?” he rages, fuming. “What the hell did you think _that_ would make easy?”  
  
“You leaving me!” she screams.  
  
“What?!” His brain whirs and clicks, trying to process it all. “I’m not—-“  
  
She snorts, derisive. “Yes, you _are_. You’ve been leaving me since the day we got together and I’ve just been too blind...” She shakes her head slowly, closing her eyes as if in pain. “Too full of hope to see it.” Tears slip from between her closed lashes, lamplight catching in them, making them glitter like ice, and at last he moves toward her, meaning to take her in his arms after all.  
  
“Don’t,” she whispers. “Just... don’t, okay? I can’t...” She heaves a great, shivering sigh, a single tear slipping from her chin and falling to the carpet, staining deep crimson the color of blood as it falls.  
  
“If you touch me now, I won’t be able to do this. I’m not strong like you.”  
  
One hand stretches out toward her, fingers unfurling, then withering, coming to rest uselessly against his thigh.  
  
“I don’t understand.”  
  
“Do you love me?” Eyes brilliant with tears, clear, naked blue flecked with suffering, pupils wide and black with knowing.  
  
“You know I do.”  
  
“As much as you love her?” Choked and aching, bleeding and dying.  
  
He could lie. Every instinct and iota of compassion within him screams at him to lie, but she would know. Already knows. Stillness sweeps over him like the hush of dawn, and he holds his silence, for anything else would be an affront to her.  
  
And it comes, storm shaking free as if from the heavens. Her hands climb to her shoulders like small children seeking comfort, and she rocks forward. Cradles herself as a ragged sob tears free from her chest like the sound of the world ripping itself apart.  
  
“Nina, please.” Broken whisper, dead words. He feels like a child playing at adult games, and he wonders why he always fails.  
  
“Don’t.”  
  
She spins away and grabs her purse, wiping desperately at her face as she runs for the door.  
  
Helpless, he stands and watches her go, the taste of her name upon his lips, blooming and dying, unspoken.  
  
*  
  
Spike turns off the bathtub faucet, cutting the flow of water in time to hear the bathroom door slam open.  
  
He shoves back the shower curtain and steps out, still dripping, wearing nothing but a mocking grin.  
  
“Was wondering when you’d show up.”  
  
The words are scarcely out of his mouth before Angel’s fist connects with it, spinning him sideways like a top. He pitches backward into the tub, ending in a graceless tangle of limbs, pale white against paler porcelain. Touches his hand to his mouth, finds blood, and he smirks up at Angel’s towering form.  
  
“You just can’t keep your hands off what’s mine, can you Spike?”  
  
He is furious, livid, caveman brow dark and stormy above eyes that flash steel and promise pain.  
  
“Aw, you feeling left out, Angel?” he asks, tongue slowly licking blood from a lewd grin. “Not to worry.” Tone too light and dripping sarcasm. “I already had both the girls today. Might as well go for the hat trick.”  
  
Before the words are even out of his mouth, Angel’s hands are on him, rough, cruel and cutting into bone as they yank him up onto his feet.  
  
“You’ve been wanting this since the night I left you in that alley, haven’t you Spike?” Angel asks, hissing hot breath into his face. His eyes are narrowed slits boring holes into the back of Spike’s brain. “Did you feel betrayed? Did I break your heart?” Angel’s voice is cruel, mocking as it cascades through him, cutting closer to the bone than the pressure of Angel’s hands.  
  
Spike chuffs in pain and surprise, retreating from those burning eyes, and then Angel’s mouth fastens to his, kissing hard, pushing against teeth that slice into the flesh of his lower lip.  
  
Angel growls at the sweet taste of blood, coppery and thick, and Spike rises against him, mouth opening, letting blood flow free, giving everything over completely to Angel, and taking everything all at once.  
  
Sweet, God, so sweet. Those hands in his hair, tugging and twisting, moving his head this way and that as Angel’s rough, demanding mouth devours every whimper that shudders free of his naked, shivering form.  
  
Angel spins him around and the world flies by in slow motion, ending against the lip of the sink, hard hands digging into his hair, his back, pushing him down, and then there are spit-slicked fingers pushing into him, and he forgets how everything Angel said to him is true--how he’d felt betrayed and hurt, still, after all these years--and there is only pleasure and the arching of his back as he thrusts backward, greedy and wanting, undulating against fingers that stroke and nudge and know.  
  
“Did you miss me, Spike?” Angel leans close, body pressing against Spike, hard muscle and harder cock and Spike arches into him. “Must have killed you, me ignoring you the whole time we’ve been here. You always were an attention whore.”  
  
“You’ve got my attention, now,” Angel whispers next to Spike’s ear, and he shudders at the heated breath that fills him, his world contracting to a tiny pinpoint of light. The crunching sound of bone and the flowing of features like melted wax, and fangs sink deep into the flesh of his neck, claiming him, possessing him, owning him and oh, God—  
  
Teeth retract and withdraw, and that voice whispers hot in his ear again. “What did you do to her?”  
  
It’s an old game, one they haven’t played in more than a century, but Spike remembers the rules, knows those fingers will stop their rough, rending pleasure, knows Angel will pull away if he doesn’t answer, leave him hot and writhing against the sink alone, passion spilling out into his hands.  
  
“I brought her up here... could barely keep her hands off me—“ He gasps as Angel’s cock nudges against him, pushing him open.  
  
“She was soaking wet--Pushed her up against the wall and slid my dick—“  
  
Angel shoves deep inside him, and Spike groans, pushing back against him.  
  
“Keep talking,” Angel growls in his ear, twisting his cock inside Spike.  
  
Spike does. Tilts his head back and closes his eyes, words pouring from him like fiery rain as he tells Angel everything. And somewhere during the litany of sins that fall from his lips, he must say something pleasing, because Angel wraps a merciful hand around his cock, pumping and squeezing and fucking until the words become meaningless, strangled sounds.  
  
He’s poised on the edge of exploding, fingertips stroking the underside of his cock in time with the savage thrusts of Angel’s hips, and he gasps, biting the very air as the muscles in his groin tighten and—  
  
Suddenly all movement ceases. Spikes eyes flutter open in panic, need, surprise, to find only an empty mirror before him, weight of Angel’s body keeping him firmly in place bent over the sink.  
  
Angel’s voice is rough and gritty against his ear, hot sand and growling vampiric purr. “Did it make it sweeter, Spike? Taking what you knew was mine?”  
  
“Hard to take what’s being given awa--,” he gasps out, and before the final word escapes his throat, Angel’s got his free hand wrapped around Spike’s neck, squeezing him into silence.  
  
“You’re mine, too, Spike. Never forget.”  
  
“Not...” Spike rasps.  
  
Angel tightens his grip. “Shut up,” he hisses, grinding and slamming into Spike, and God, it’s so good, sweet friction, angling just right, hitting that perfect spot. And this is the way it’s always been between them; sudden, violent, intensely exquisite. Equal parts power and possession, and they might be fighting, the way they stretch and strain against each other.  
  
Angelus was always about power, punishment, and this is that, but it’s something more, too.  
  
Revenge. Release.  
  
Thrust and tongue and slickly sweet, consuming from the inside out, he knows what he is to Angel; a funeral pyre burning slow and long. The final resting place between what might have been and what will be. He is fire, bright and clean; pure and cleansing as it consumes the ghosts of the past--the ashes from which a phoenix will be reborn.  
  
Confession. Absolution.  
  
He is the altar that Angel lays his sin upon, and he spreads himself wide.  
  
It is only in these moments that they understand each other.  
  
*  
  
When it’s over, they disengage and drift apart without ceremony, without fanfare.  
  
“Ought to thank me, you know. Nina, too.”  
  
“What?” Angel voice slices through the tense silence like a razor, and his eyes flash amber beneath the soft, round globes of bathroom light.  
  
“Come on, _Rico_ ,” Spike smirks, drolly. “You don’t think your girl knew you’d never walk away? That you’d hang in there forever, just barely loving her? Did you really think that’d be enough?”  
  
Angel just stares at him, like he can’t quite make up his mind whether to hit him or fuck him again.  
  
Spike figures, either way, he’s pretty well prepared for both.  
  
“Easier this way. Cleaner.”  
  
“Remind me to send you a fruit basket,” Angel sneers, eyes shooting sparks.  
  
“Already had all the nummy treats I needed today, thanks,” he says, grinning around the filter of a cigarette.  
  
Angel draws back his fist and Spike ducks under his arm, spinning around behind Angel in time to see the larger man’s fist hit the mirror and shatter it into a thousand glittering fragments.  
  
“Oh, don’t be a spoil-sport,” Spike chides. “You get the win, after all.”  
  
Angel turns on him, hulking and glowering, breathing fast and hard, as if he needs anything the air could give him.  
  
“Surprised you didn’t go to her first,” Spike says, and his voice is much steadier than he’d imagined it would be. So much less bitter.  
  
Surprise registers in the planes of Angel’s faces, dark eyes narrowing fractionally with understanding. For a single, surreal moment, Spike imagines that he can see himself reflected in their opaque, liquid depths.  
  
“Are you jealous over her? Or me?” Angel asks.  
  
Spike snorts, sending smoke curling around his angular features, and cuts his eyes dismissively away from Angel. He turns his bare back to the other man and strides into the hotel bedroom.  
  
“Don’t know _what_ she sees in you, after all you did. Killed the gypsy then tried killin’ all her friends, then tried killin’ her and ending the world to boot.”  
  
“You weren’t exactly a prince,” Angel mocks.  
  
But Spike isn’t listening. “I died, but she mourned you.” His eyes fix somewhere on the horizon of memory. “Some part of her never stopped mourning you.”  
  
He turns and Angel looks at him with those eyes, those dark, brooding eyes that he hated once when they were cruel, and hates still, now that they brood and fume.  
  
“She mourns you still. Loves you... in spite of it all.” His mouth makes a startled, bewildered sound of laughter.  
  
And he could have exchanged the word “she” for the word “I” and it would all have been just as true, and Angel knows this, as surely as he’s ever known anything.  
  
Angel stares at him for a long moment, a strange smile, caught somewhere between sadness and mocking twisting his mouth. Finally, he lays a hand against Spike’s cheek, and his eyes are as much an enigma to Spike as they have ever been.  
  
“Love’s a funny thing,” he whispers.  
  
*  
  
Buffy lies in bed alone in her hotel room, restless and torn.  
  
Images spin inside her mind, visions of history bearing guilt and blood and remorse. She and Angel kissing as the beach swirls around them, the twist of guilt on his face and in her heart as she pulls away, knowing fate will always place something between them, keep them apart.  
  
Nina, kissing her with bittersweet need, the scent of exotic flowers surrounding them both, swallowing them whole, and the spark of warmth in her chest, and then lower, between her hips, suffused with longing to become something neither of them fully understands.  
  
Spike, touching her, the soothing touch of rough, callused hands on her skin and eyes the color of the sky, looking at her with such—  
  
Reverence. Devotion. Love.  
  
Of them all, only he is without implication, only he is without consequence. Within the quiet fires of his remembered eyes, the only guilt she feels is self-inflicted—self created.  
  
_Why won’t you love me? He implores—_  
  
Propelled by something she cannot quite lay name to, she rises.  
  
*  
  
Spike goes to answer the door, towel slung low around his hips.  
  
Angel stands, hiding from view inside the more than modestly sized bathroom, turquoise tile fitted between tiles of baked red-brown; earth and sky. He stands still and ceases the artifice of breath, tiny sounds drifting to him across the silence of the room.  
  
Small, concerned noises over the state of Spike’s face, and then that girlish voice, even lower, murmuring words that whisper of caring—  
  
Buffy.  
  
Angel steps from the bathroom, out into her view, and she’s standing close, oh so very close to Spike in the split second before she sees him, and there’s a look in her eyes as she gazes up at Spike, one that if he were mortal would give his heart pause and steal his breath away.  
  
That look in her eyes.  
  
“Buffy?”  
  
“Angel?” A quick step taken backward, away from Spike. “What are you...? WHY are you...?” She stops, folds her arms over her chest and stares at them both, wary and belligerent, as if they’d been trying to trick her.  
  
“What’s going on?”  
  
He and Spike stare at each other wordlessly, silence stretching out like eternity between them, until at last the younger vampire looks away with a bitter, sardonic curl of his tongue inside his cheek.  
  
“I...” Angel stops, clears his throat, looks at Buffy again. “Nina left me.”  
  
Her face blooms with a thousand expressions, flowering and falling over and over again as she takes that in.  
  
And then she is in his arms. It feels like home and it feels like tragedy, his mouth filling with all the bitterness of years.  
  
He’s wanted her for so long, spent so long trying to deny it, push it down and forget it, tried to love Nina more, they way he knows he should, but he can’t, never has, and she’s always known it, somewhere deep down inside where secrets go to live.  
  
This beautiful, golden girl who embodies everything that has ever been best and bright in him. Yes. He wants her. Wants her like the desert wants the rain, like the flowers cry for the sun.  
  
And it could be everything, the turning moment between them, kisses and exultations and the pure, simple joy of their true reunion shared. But he knows this music, knows that the path they’ve set foot upon doesn’t end like that. Fairy tale endings and happily-ever-after’s aren’t for such as them, no matter how much he wants to believe in them. There is too much that has come between them.  
  
That look in her eyes.  
  
He takes a breath.  
  
And still, even with all the courage he’s found, it takes him a moment to find the words, to force them through the numbness of his lips.  
  
“Do you love him?”  
  
And he knows how much this hurts--for him, for her—how it tears at her heart. He knows she loves him, knows she always will, but there’s been someone else in her life, someone who’s been friend _and_ lover; everything he could never be, and he has to know, has to hear it said aloud. Has to make it real, believe it somehow.  
  
He stands silent, face carefully expressionless, breath caught in his chest like thin, bright wire, waiting.  
  
*  
  
Angel.  
  
God knows she loves him, but somewhere in the wild, open fields of her heart, there is a place set aside, a quiet hearthstone where she sits alone sometimes and her dreams are of a platinum-haired man who’s been... what, exactly?  
  
Spike. Enemy, friend, confidante, partner, lover; devoted in every sense of the word. They have been drawn and bound together as surely as any two soul mates had ever been. Knowing him is like breathing, and they’ve had so much time… nothing but time... side by side as they stepped through the years, friends and leaders and comrades in arms. But never truly together.  
  
Spike. Bright blue eyes, hard and brittle as steel cut into Angel, the angle of his jaw set tight with the rage of his beautiful, blazing heart.  
  
What does she feel for him? The million dollar question. If she could answer it, this would have all been set straight long ago. But she doesn’t love him. Has spent time immeasurable considering just how much she does not love him.  
  
“I... You were gone for so long, and then I... we...”  
  
And what she’d meant to say is not at all what leaves her mouth.  
  
*  
  
“Do you love him?” Angel asks again, his face still as stone.  
  
“I...” She shakes her head, eyes afire, and then slow, slow and steady, she turns her face downward away from him, bowing her head as if seeking penance. “I... thought I did...”  
  
“Still do?” he asks, almost insists, feeling pain lance through his heart with the words. But they are truth, and he’ll take the truth over a lie any day.  
  
Her very breath shivers in her chest like dying bird, and her silence is hole right through the middle of him, carving out everything that matters.  
  
That look in her eyes.  
  
“Yes.” She stills, and tears streak her face like tiny diamond rivers as she lifts her eyes to him, so confused and perilously frail as they beg his understanding. Those round eyes, so surprised, and he thinks she did not know the answer to the question, herself, until just now.  
  
It doesn’t touch him at all.  
  
Not on the outside. The outside is cool, calm, collected, together. Inside, his mind falls apart, shards shattering into even tinier fragments and then sown back together against his will with all the sorrow and knowing that has come to pass.  
  
She is still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and she still takes his breath away, even now—-especially now. _How can it be this?_ He wonders. _How can it be now?_  
  
Words turn over like a soft sigh in his memory, kisses given in rain, fingers entwined and promises given. Forever and always, she says, and she binds his wounds and caresses the scars in the shade of memory, a fusion of sizzle and twist and sear as they merge together, forming mezzotints and mosaics in tiled patterns he can scarcely comprehend and wants to even less.  
  
He feels like a picture, all tinted and plastic; not real, but with the patterns of reality painted across his breadth. Indelible, unchangeable reality, held frozen, time in a bottle, a boy in a doorway who only wants her in his arms, only wants her here in his arms. Not these fractured pixels and jagged ceramic shards of memory that cut as they fall together, breaking him to pieces all over again, but it’s not that simple anymore, hasn’t been that simple in eight years, and it’s his fault, his fault, his own stupid, irrevocable folly.  
  
He hates it. He rages inside at it like a savage beast, teeth bared and growling, and it only stares back at him, unmoved. He hates it, and he doesn’t understand why it has to be this, had to be now...  
  
He sucks in air, takes a deep breath, and takes it on the chin.  
  
His lips curve in a sad parody of a smile, and he reaches out to touch her cheek, fingertips stuttering with awkward gentleness against her cheek. He opens his mouth to speak, shakes his head lightly, and then swallows instead, fingers trembling as they leave her skin. He turns, sharp lines and curves of the world dissolving into wet fractals of white light that fill his eyes, and he blinks away salt, closing the door behind him softly before she can see.  
  
*  
  
And all her dreams drop like stones plummeting from the sky, tiny birds with dull, empty eyes and burning wings.


	5. Chapter 5

Buffy turns her eyes away, turns her heart away as Angel walks out the door. She feels like she's suffocating, dying inside, but she holds it all together by sheer force of will.  
  
How can he just walk away from her? How, when all she can do is watch him leave? How, when he is everything she's ever wanted and can never have? How much of her life spent aching and wanting on the ragged edge? And how much more of her can be shattered, before there's nothing left to give?  
  
Spike inhales sharply, taking a single step toward her, and she blinks back the pain, blinks back the memories and the years and the yearning.  
  
She can be more than this, can't she? More than these broken, jagged pieces of girl that cut when he reaches for her?  
  
There has to be more to her than this. There has to be.  
  
*  
  
He isn't prepared. He's never considered what might happen if they never got to the place where they walked hand in hand, side by side, heart in heart. All the stars, dark, all the skies, gray, and she loves him. She loves him. All the time spent waiting and wanting and straining and dying and she loves him. It's the cruelest irony, the killing joke, and he loves her more truly now than he ever did before he had a soul, but his soul is the very reason he has to let her go.  
  
She loves him. And yet he is still alone and aching and wishing for impossible things.  
  
"It's not bloody fair, you know. Waited all this time to hear you say that. Thought I deserved the reward. All that bluster and show, and here I am." He gives a surprised, ironic laugh. "I didn't even know there was a choice to make till I knew I had one."  
  
She stares at him, her eyes open and naked, secrets laid bare to him, for the first time, for the last time. Green-gray tempests that consume his soul. It's like staring into the heart of heaven itself. He stands, astounded and awed beyond anything he's ever known.  
  
"This isn't what you want." He tries to make himself sound sure, to tell, not ask, and love grows small within his chest, a tiny, frightened, dying thing that beats back in desperation against the arm that he wraps about her body, drawing her close to where his heart fills deep with ice. Cracked and broken, unbeating, but enough to fire his blood. Enough to remind him that part of him is still human, even if he does not live.  
  
"It's what I can have." She stares at him with those fathomless eyes, those depths that swallow him whole and leave him gasping for breath he doesn't need.  
  
"Oh, Buffy," he whispers, fingers brushing her cheek with reverence and knowing sadness. "It'll never be enough."  
  
"You're rejecting me?" Buffy voice is disbelief, a raw, high-pitched whine that makes him wince when it strikes his ears.  
  
"Oh, luv, no," Spike says, cupping her face gently in his hands, staring straight down into her soul. "Never."  
  
“Then why?”  
  
“Just told you why. Never be enough for you.”  
  
“Yes! It can! It is!” she protests, her voice rising angrily.  
  
“You already know it isn’t.”  
  
And he’s right, and she knows he’s right, but she doesn’t _want_ to know. She crumbles, sagging in his arms, a single tear rolling down her cheek. “It should be enough! It ought to be enough!”  
  
“Can’t choose who you love, Buffy,” he says, softly. “You know that.”  
  
“Why can’t it be enough?” she asks miserably.  
  
“Wish I knew, pet.”  
  
Broken and bruised, aching around the edges of his piecemeal hope and his wounded heart, he hugs her close. The room is calm, quiet, and yet the air tingles around him, moving over his skin as if with the electricity of anticipation. His mind curdles with the fullness of understanding, and the deepest core of everything he is feels shrunken, emaciated, dying by inches… and yet… and yet... there is something deeper; a sense of calm that drives deep into his bones and steadies his soul. There is a fated feeling to this, a finality in this moment, as if everything he has been, everything he is slowly becoming has converged in this very instant, and he stands on a precipice; an abyss stretching away endlessly beneath his feet, offering nothing but open air and bone shattering halts. The world yawns in blackness before him, and nothing is certain, except that nothing will ever be the same again.  
  
She has been the axis upon which his world turned.  
  
But there's someone who understands her more than he does. A sadness in her that he can't erase. She could love him the rest of his days and he would never be the one. Once, he could have lived with that—could have lived with anything if it meant having her in his arms. But he'd gotten a soul for her, had wanted to be better for her. Caught on the cusp of life, he had struggled for her—struggled _toward_ her—-had become almost human for her. He had become a man.  
  
And that man couldn't live with this. No matter how she felt, he could never live with her unhappiness. Could never live with being second best.  
  
_And you'll always be second best, won't you, Spikey?_ Angelus's voice slithers down the corridors of his mind, cold and scaly serpent that clings and coils.  
  
He ignores it. Because Angelus and Angel and every other bloody fucking split personality his "sire" is hiding behind that glowering caveman brow can sod off and die. This moment, this victory, belongs to Spike.  
  
He cups the back of her golden head, turns his cheek into her hair and breathes her deep, feeling her warm and yielding in his arms. For this moment, for one single, shining moment, she is his. Only for this moment.  
  
It isn't much as victories go.  
  
But for this one moment, he'll take it.  
  
*  
  
He helps her back to her room, sits and smokes cigarettes all day, watching the sunlight slowly creep and fill the room to bursting, and then roll back out again like the tide, last crimson fingers of sunset releasing the room reluctantly.  
  
His fingers start and stop, stuttering over ink and paper, time and time again, and he feels his hands ill-suited to this work. Never have his fingers felt so thick and primitive and useless.  
  
The room grows ever darker, and finally he finishes his work, biting down against the inside of his jaw as he makes the final pen stroke.  
  
And still, she sleeps.  
  
He watches over her in silence, listening to her breathe.  
  
*  
  
The quiet of the room seems sudden, and Buffy blinks awake, knowing instantly that she is alone.  
  
There’s a note on her bed, written in Spike’s scrawling script.  
  
_Thought I’d spare you the awkward goodbye’s..._  
  
She sits on the bed and reads it three times before the words blur.  
  
*  
  
Spike answers the door to his room, suitcase in one hand, cigarette in the other.  
  
“Spike. I... uh.” Angel stands there, mouth opening and closing like a dying fish as he casts about for words. Spike lets him stand there like that, brows arched and eyes wide, the picture of saintly patience, watching him in amusement. Finally Angel clenches his jaw and glances downward. “I came by to say goodbye.”  
  
“To me?” The sarcasm in Spike’s voice is so affected that it fairly drips acid. “Why Angel, I didn’t know you cared.”  
  
“To Buffy, you moron,” Angel says, the sharp, deadly gaze of his brown eyes drilling holes through Spike. “Is she here?’  
  
“She’s in her room,” Spike says shortly. “But you’re not leaving. I am.”  
  
“What?” He blinks, slow and dull-witted as a cow.  
  
"Listen, I don’t have much time, so I’m gonna make this quick: You're gonna live forever, barring pointy stakes, mate. You really want to live like this?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"God's sake, Angel. Angelus. Rico." He shrugs and makes a dismissive gesture. "Whoever you are this week. Girl loves you more than anything."  
  
"She loves you, too."  
  
Spike smiles hard; the curve of a striking serpent. "And you love Nina."  
  
Angel blinks and shakes his head, lost and flailing. "I don't understand."  
  
"Course you don't. Never were so much on brains as brawn." He takes a last drag of his cigarette and cuts his eyes at Angel with thin amusement. “Look. I’ve already done more than my part in this, mate. Way bloody more than I ought to have. And I don’t even think you deserve this. So if you think I’m going to be the one to tell you how to not screw this up...” He stubs out his smoke, then turns to look at Angel full on. “Think again.”  
  
He steps out into the hall, pulls a room key from his duster, and slowly slides it down into Angel’s shirt pocket.  
  
“There. Key to her room. Up to you, what you do with it.” He leans up a bit, face inching closer to Angel’s with a smirk. “Actually? I’m kind of hoping you do screw this up.” He pats Angel on the shoulder just a little too hard, then turns away.  
  
“Be seeing you,” Spike calls over his shoulder with a grin as he saunters down the hall.  
  
*  
  
Spike. Stepping aside for him? There’s a concept. Right up there next to Satan serving snow cones.  
  
He eyes the key in his hands, turning it over and over, a tiny bit of metal possibility that cuts into the lines of his hands and heart.  
  
He knows what he wants to do. But he’s a man who’s life has been built on what he should do, and he’s grown so used to denying himself that he can’t even imagine opening that door. He wonders briefly when such a way of thinking became a way of life, when the idea peace became even more frightening than the possibility of indulgence.  
  
And here, now, he literally holds the key to all these things, right here in his hand. And there’s nothing to stop him. Nothing except himself.  
  
The memory of her blue, tear filled eyes, the way her hands fluttered like dying birds trying to protect herself from the truth.  
  
_Do you love me?  
  
As much as you love her?_  
  
He _knows_ what he _wants_ to do.  
  
He _does_ what he _should_ do.  
  
*  
  
He’s almost back to their room when the door opens.  
  
Nina meets him in the hallway, suitcases in hand. She’s beautiful in sunflower yellow, eyes the color of the sky, and he wants to tell her, suddenly, how very much she means to him. How much she always will.  
  
“Nina, I can’t let you—“  
  
She takes a deep breath and meets his eyes.  
  
“No, Angel. You _have_ to let me do this.”  
  
He bows his head against the pain in his heart and waits.  
  
"I meant to do it better than I did," she says, lower lip trembling, chin held high and proud, tears pricking just beyond the fringe of her light-colored lashes. A wry, empty laugh escapes her. “I meant to be noble and magnanimous. Say goodbye and waltz out all grace and composure.” She shakes her head. “I’m sorry I fell apart.”  
  
“You don’t have anything to apologize for.”  
  
She looks at him, her eyes sad and distant, an odd smile that really isn’t a smile at all playing about her lips.  
  
“Not even Spike?”  
  
Words die and lodge in his throat, and he swallows hard against their mass.  
  
"We made such a mess of everything," she whispers.  
  
"We really did," he says, assuming all the blame, himself.  
  
"We all did the best we could." She reaches out with a hand that shakes almost as badly as her smile. Her fingertips skim the smooth skin of his cheek, and warm ripples spread from them like ripples on the surface of a pond.  
  
Forgiveness. Acceptance.  
  
Blue eyes meet his with deeper meaning than her words, and he hears it, spoken just as if she'd said it out loud.  
  
"You should hate me," he whispers.  
  
"Would that make it easier for you?" She lowers his chin with the barest touch of her hand. "No hating. I'll always--"  
  
"Shh..." He presses his fingers to her lips, stilling them. He shakes his head once. "You don't have to say it."  
  
"I wanted to."  
  
"I know," he says, with small, fragile smile. "I already know."  
  
She takes his hands in hers, presses them together and clasps them against her heart.  
  
"We had some good times, didn't we?" she asks, her smile tremulous.  
  
"Some of the best."  
  
They stand that way for the space of a few heartbeats—for forever, it seems—and then she gives his hands back to him with gentle care.  
  
"Go, Angel. Go to her. Love her, and never waste a moment of the time you have together."  
  
"Nina--"  
  
"Please. Don't make me say it again." Her mouth curls in a bitter smile, trembling on the verge of tears. "I don't know if I can."  
  
"Will you... Will you be all right?" he asks.  
  
She nods, eyes wet as she steps backward from him.  
  
"I will."  
  
She gives him a last, faint smile—-a smile so filled with "what might have been" that it nearly chokes him to see it.  
  
Then she turns on her heel and sweeps down the hallway in a yellow wave of sun-dress.  
  
Like that... she’s gone.  
  
"Thank you," he whispers to the empty hallway.  
  
*  
  
“Angel?” Buffy sits up on the bed, her head still sleep-filled, rumpled with dreams still clinging to it, and for a moment, she’s not sure if he’s really here.  
  
For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything, just stares at her with those sad, soulful eyes. And then he moves to sit beside her on the bed. He looks just the same as he always does in her memories; tall, strong, handsome—but then he does begin to speak and she knows she’s not dreaming, because the words that come from his mouth are nothing like the ones he speaks in her dreams.  
  
“It won’t ever be true happiness. After what happened with you... and then later, with Connor.” He pauses, searching for words, and shakes his head. “I don’t know if I’ll ever know _true_ happiness again.”  
  
She thinks about that for a long moment, mulling it over.  
  
“Me either,” she answers somberly, staring up into his deep brown eyes. “I’m not sixteen anymore, Angel.” She almost whispers, leaning up toward his face. “I’m not a little girl, and we aren’t the same people we were then. We can’t ever get that back, can’t ever be those people again.”  
  
His face flinches as if she’d struck him, but he doesn’t turn away. Takes it all and drinks it down as if to say, yes, he deserves this penance, this punishment. Her fingertips skim the line of his jaw and he’s never felt fragile to her before this, strong and sure and like salvation and home, but never fragile.  
  
“That kind of innocence...” she shakes her head sadly. “Once it’s lost, I think it’s gone forever.” His eyes, God, his eyes, echoing with sadness, pain so deep and dark and bound to him just as surely as his soul, etched eternally into the lines of his face. “But maybe it doesn’t have to be perfect. Maybe it doesn’t have to be true happiness. Maybe, for once, it can just... be what it is.”  
  
He tilts his head slightly, lips parting unconsciously as he leans toward her. “And what is it? This thing we have? Because it owns me, Buffy.” His voice is thick, urgent and heated, and she feels a thrill run through her at the sound of it, so deep and full of need.  
  
“That’s the whole point; we have to find out.” And she thinks maybe she does know but she’s too scared to say it out loud—-too soon, too much, and he’s close, so close she can barely think anymore. Her eyes are wide, they feel too wide and her skin is hot, and if he would just touch her—  
  
“I think about Nina, and I know I should feel terrible. And part of me does. But all the things I’ve done, the hurt I’ve caused... for her, for Spike...” his eyes go wide and liquid, “none of it matters, because all I can see, all I can feel, all I can care about, is you.” He blinks, staring at her plaintively. “What kind of person does that make me?” he asks, beseeching, as if for acceptance, forgiveness.  
  
She stares at him, speechless, breathless as the truth washes over her like a wave.  
  
“A person like me,” she answers.  
  
“It doesn’t seem right.”  
  
“Maybe it’s beyond right and wrong, Angel. Maybe it’s beyond who’s to blame.”  
  
“And maybe we just don’t care.”  
  
She swallows hard against that, and manages to nod. “Maybe.”  
  
“She forgave me. Sent me here with her blessing. Told me not to waste a moment that we have together. And even now it’s taking everything I have in me to hold back.”  
  
“Then why are you?” she asks, breath escaping her in a rush.  
  
His eyes focus on her sharply, something dark and dangerous flickering in their depths. “Because holding back is all I’ve ever done.”  
  
She leans up toward him, one hand cupping his face. “Then don’t.”  
  
*  
  
The first time is hungry, quick and rough, her body clinging to him like second skin as she wraps herself around him, whispering to him urgently with heated breath. Presses her into the bed and kisses her until she’s breathless, his hands everywhere, all over her skin, cupping the firm swell of her breasts, twisting and teasing the hard buds of her nipples.  
  
He can feel her pulse racing beneath her skin like a thousand tiny horses, each one straining and arcing against the touch of his hand. Lifts her lacy little skirt, finds her aching wetness and slides home, crushing her against him, fingers between them tracing a rhythm against her clit until she mewls like a kitten and explodes, her hot little pussy milking him dry.  
  
“Don’t stop,” she breathes, and he doesn’t except to pull her clothes from her and then they’re tumbling naked together across the bed for an instant before he pushes back inside her. God, she’s so beautiful, the flush of her cheeks, her kiss-reddened mouth, those tiny fingers that twine through his, tracing spirals on the backs of his hands, and he raises her palms to kiss each of them, reverently, and slower now, pull and twist and thrust and...  
  
And nothing matters but the momentary touch of her hand; nothing but the softness of her skin. And he is a man who's spent a lifetime like a needle in a bruise, a lifetime spent avoiding the news, and he cares so much and he doesn't care about anything else, ever, so long as she is here, beautiful and vibrant and naked and alive and touching him, holding him, breathing him and loving him and God, it's more than he'd ever imagined it could be, this joining of flesh and this feeling that is too large to hold inside either of them as they embrace and kiss and love and discover each other all over again inside and out,  
  
*  
  
and God she is going to break, shatter into a thousand tiny meaningless fragments that only call his name and want his touch, and there is nothing in the world so much as this and she doesn't know how she could have ever forgotten,  
  
*  
  
and he is so thirsty, and God, he wants to drink her down, slake his firing need, his aching want, and there isn't enough of her touching him, never enough, and this is the sweetest, the best, the brightest,  
  
*  
  
and he is everything, the sun the moon the stars her world, exploding and contracting like the birth of the universe all around her and she is more alive than she’s ever been, a sunburst of joy at the center and all the planets spin around her while gravity cries his name,  
  
*  
  
and all the broken pieces of him that ever were all glued back together in just the right way so that he curves like a bright star against her, perfect and whole and the best man he could ever be, all right here in her arms, cradled right here in her arms, loved like a man, held like a child, held up so high, taken to the sky, taken in her arms...  
  
This is everything. How could he have ever forgotten, even for a moment, what she is; what they are together?  
  
“Oh, God.” His voice is thick and strangled as she convulses around him, and then, for a while, all thoughts cease.  
  
*  
  
They crest and then recede like an ocean wave, each falling, spent, into the others arms.  
  
Buffy lays wrapped up in his embrace, face pressed into his chest, safe and warm and more content than she’s possibly ever been in her entire life, unable to deny the intrinsic feeling of “right” that there is about this moment. There’s a tremendous amount of “right”, here, even with all the wrong they went through to get to it.  
  
She isn’t sure if it balances out, but here in his arms, golden and glowing and feeling like warm melted taffy, she thinks that maybe, somehow, they can find it within them to overcome it. They’ve been forgiven; now all they have to is forgive themselves. And if that doesn’t work out... well... There’ll be the usual penance paid with good deeds, and hey, the occasional near death experience, with, you know, possible actual death thrown in as a bonus. And don't forget the intermittent drama, and fighting, and angst, because, well, this is Angel. Better not to sugar coat it.  
  
Funny. She almost can't wait.  
  
But there’s plenty of time for all that.  
  
She kisses his chest and shifts her weight, wriggling backwards a bit to see him. His eyes flutter slightly in response to her movement, and his arms tighten around her automatically, as if to keep her from slipping away.  
  
_SO not going anywhere_ , she thinks with a smile.  
  
“I was thinking, I might tell Giles I’m taking some time off. You know, since I’m more “she who will fight the vampires with an army of chosen ones” than “one girl in all the world”, these days.”  
  
His eyes flicker open, warm brown and gently questioning.  
  
“So how long can you stay in Cancun?” she asks.  
  
He slides back from her a bit, tilting his face down to look at her, and he’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. “How about forever? Does forever work for you?”  
  
Her smile rises up like the sun from the tips of her toes, warming her from the inside out before exploding into brilliance.  
  
She's not one girl in all the world anymore. But she's still _his_ girl.  
  
Always.  
  
  
*  
  
EPILOGUE  
  
“Last call for boarding American Airlines Flight 508 to Buenos Aires.” The tinny female voice resonates over the speaker, hanging in the air of the cabin for a moment, and Nina looks around, as if expecting last minute passengers to appear out of mid-air.  
  
The seat next to her is still empty and she’s hoping it will stay that way as she raises her eyes to the line of people straggling down the aisle with suitcases in their hands, laughing and talking as they tuck their belongings away tidily beneath seats and stuffed them into overhead compartments. People going on with life as if it were any other day.  
  
She looks away, eyes finding the sky outside, its color a slightly paler shade of black than the asphalt that stretches out endlessly below it.  
  
Someone jostles her seat as a presence fills the empty space beside her, and she turns to greet her aisle mate despite herself, summoning a smile.  
  
“Hi, I’m—,” The words die in her throat.  
  
“Nina, isn’t it?” Spike asks, with a lazy arch of one brow, managing to arrange himself in the tiny chair in such comfortably cool repose that it borders on unnatural. “Well,” he says with a curl of his tongue against the inside of his cheek. “Fancy meeting you here.”  
  
The safety belt light dings on, and the pilot’s voice crackles to life over the speakers. It’s eighty-five degrees outside, and they are flying non-stop to Argentina, he informs everyone, as if they didn’t already know.  
  
“Ever been to Buenos Aires?” he asks after a bit, pulling a magazine from the chair in front of them.  
  
“No.”  
  
“Well, then. First thing we’ll do when we get there is—-what?” he asks, breaking off, suddenly suspicious at her stare.  
  
She stares at him for a long moment, and then her mouth curves into a bemused smile. “I was just thinking... This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”  
  
“You start calling me Louis and I’ll cheerfully throw you off the plane, luv.” His voice is calm, seemingly indifferent as he flips through his magazine.  
  
But he smiles when he says it.  
  
  
FINIS


End file.
